Jun 16, 2021 Mobility Committee on 2021-06-16 9:00 AM

>> Good morning, mobility committee. I'm Rachel wood, deputy director of capital projects. I will be serving as the primary staff liaison for today's meeting in Becky's absence, but just wanted to say good morning and I'll turn it over to chairman Meltzer to begin the meeting. >> Good morning. Seeing that we have a quorum present, I invite you to watch as we convene the mobility committee for this morning. Our first item for individual consideration is item a, considering approval of the minutes and I'll entertain a motion. Councilmember McGuire. >> I move to approve the minutes. >> As written. >> Councilmember Bertha, I realize I didn't fully see if your hand was up or not, so if you could make it real big because I'm only seen you on a little screen. Is there a second? >> I second. >> Thank you. All in favor, please raise your hands. Okay. Minutes are approved. So we have -- we're moving on to item b. Receiving nominations and electing a chair and vice chair. Because this is almost an entirely new committee now. We have two new members that I'm happy to welcome today, so I'll entertain nominations for chair. Councilmember McGuire. >> I would like to nominate Mayor Pritz and Meltzer for chair. >> I'll accept. Let's see. Look for any other nominations. Is there a second? Well, I suppose I can second my own nomination. >> I second. >> Okay. Thank you. All in favor of Meltzer continuing as chair, please raise your hands where I can see him. Okay. So I'll continue as chair and now I'll entertain a nomination for vice chair. And councilmember McGuire. >> I would like to nominate councilmember Byrd for vice chair. >> Councilmember Byrd, do you accept? >> Yes. >> It's a weighty responsibility. You sure not? >> I promise I'll get here on time next time. >> That's a good goal. I'll second that nomination. And all in favor of councilmember Byrd as vice chair of the mobility committee, please raise your hands. And that is unanimous. We have a new chair and a new vice chair. We're excited to welcome this whole team to this mobility committee meeting. Now, I believe we have some scheduling pressures that would favor us taking item D before item C. So I'm going to call that one first unless there's any change to that. Rachel? >> Correct. We are still planning if the committee is open to it, we'd like to have item D, the DCTA item go prior to item C just because there are some schedule conflicts with the DCTA team who's presenting today. >> Okay. Without objection, I'll open item D, receive a report and hold a discussion regarding updates from the Denton County Transportation Authority. >> Well, I see, Randy, I see Nicole. >> Thank you, councilmember. I think I'm going to go first. And then Raymond and Nicole are both on the call as well. So you've got the whole gang here. So we're going to certainly tackle this as a team. But I'm going to just pull up the presentation if you'll give me just a moment. Okay. It's coming up now. There we go. Can you all see my screen at this point? Yes, and I should clarify, Randy, you don't actually represent DCTA, you're -- >> I do not. I was going to mention that in just a moment. So thank you for that. So I am actually the city's consultant on transit-related issues, have been for the past three years now for both the cities of Louisville and Denton. So I presented to council the last time in April. So councilmembers McGuire and Byrd, this is my first time before you, so thank you for having me. And I -- after hearing the presentation last week on the GoZone to council, a city staff asked me to present this presentation to you today just to give you a little more historical context and some of the data that really led to the DCTA board and staff making this recommendation and going down this path. So that's really my goal today. And again, I said you've got the whole DCTA team here, so please feel free to just interrupt me if you all have questions. We definitely want this to be interactive and make sure that the council gets the information you're looking for. So this first slide really just gives you an overview of some of the historical trends that we've seen in the past five years. And you'll notice that this is all pre-COVID ridership, so intentionally left off FY20 in order to really look at pre-COVID numbers. This is something that the DCTA board has been focused on for the last couple years. This is A train ridership, it's connect bus ridership, so including Denton, Louisville and Highland Village. And then the sales tax contributions only from the city of Denton, just to show you that those numbers continue to increase and so the funding streams are continuing to increase. I also wanted to mention of course that COVID ridership certainly is much below these numbers. But again, I really wanted to show you the pre-COVID numbers and to focus on the fact that the board has really been focused on pre-COVID ridership in order to make these decisions. I next just wanted to go through the existing bus routes in the city of Denton very quickly. I know you're all very familiar with them, but this will just give you a quick overview of the ridership numbers on each of these routes. So this is route number one. Again, this is FY19, so pre-COVID ridership. This particular route carried 5.7 passengers per hour. This route goes from the downtown Denton Transit Center down to Unicorn Lake. And I did want to mention as well that in the information that council member Armenter sent, the analysis from Dr. Fisher, I thought she made a lot of great points and one of them I wanted to mention. So the analysis and the article that she sent from Jarrett Walker, I don't know if you had a chance to read that, I'm sure you did. He's a very well-known transit consultant in the business. He is brilliant. The stuff that he did in Houston was fantastic with their bus network redesign. He's actually doing a project for Dart right now. He's working on their bus network redesign and very excited about what I've seen out of that project so far. But one of the points that he makes in his analysis is that the worst performing suburban routes around the country at least carry 10 passengers per hour. And that's, I think, an important benchmark because that's the same benchmark that Accenture used in their analysis of the DCTA bus routes. And so you'll see that in a moment. But you'll see that there's only two routes in the system in the city of Denton that come anywhere close to that number. And there's really only one route 7 that actually exceeds that 10 passengers per hour benchmark. And then of course all of the UNT routes, which are very efficient and have very high ridership. This is route number 2 and it carried in 2019 7.4 passengers per hour. It runs every 60 minutes Monday through Saturday. So the thing that I wanted to mention most about the days of the week of all of this current service is that the via on demand service that's being considered by the DCTA board, that will also run on Sundays and holidays. So 365 days a year, which I think just provides predictability, which is important for increasing ridership. The current service runs six days a week, Monday through Saturday and does not run on holidays. This is route three and this is the second highest ridership route in the city of Denton in the system. This route carried 9.5 passengers per hour pre COVID. And this is one of two routes that the DCTA board is considering keeping as fixed service because of the high ridership. This is route number four in the city of Denton. It carried five passengers per hour pre COVID. This route, I think is a perfect example of some of the initiatives that the current DCTA board has been focused on and Raymond and Chris can add to this later in the discussion. But the DCTA board has been very focused on increasing frequency on the highest ridership routes. And so this particular route during COVID was reduced down to 60 minutes all the time, all day. And as part of the discussion last summer, the DCTA board insisted that this route and several of the other higher ridership routes in Denton and Lewisville be returned to 30 minute frequency. Because everyone understands of course that the higher the frequency, the higher the ridership. And so this is certainly something that the board's been focused on. And they're actually having conversations now about the fixed route service that is going to remain in Denton, the higher ridership routes, about increasing the frequency on those bus routes as well. This is route six. And so it carried 6.6 passengers per hour pre-COVID. It runs from the DDTC up to Discovery Park. It runs every 50 minutes currently from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. And then this is route seven. This is the highest ridership route in all of DCTA's system and of course in the city of Denton as well, excluding the UNT routes. So the UNT routes obviously have the higher ridership. This is the highest ridership route of the Connect service. So it carried 14.5 passengers per hour pre-COVID. It currently runs every 30 minutes. This is the other route that is going to remain a fixed route bus service because of the high ridership. It certainly justifies the fixed route service. And then I wanted to just cover quickly a little bit about the process that the DCTA has gone through to get to this point. So Accenture did an efficiency study to look at all aspects of DCTA's operations. And part of that analysis was to look at all of the fixed route service and recommendations for how to increase ridership on that service. And so this slide is a little busy, but I'll try to walk you through it. So I apologize for that. But this came directly from Accenture. This was the result of their analysis and this was really kind of the crux of what led the DCTA board to consider going down this path and making this a very large service change. So here you're seeing eight routes, one through eight in the city of Denton, the two Lewisville Connect routes, and then North Texas Express, which is a route that goes from Denton down to Fort Worth. This is showing you the average daily boardings per hour pre-COVID in blue and then during COVID in green. So prior to the board even considering this change to on-demand during COVID, DCTA had already eliminated routes five and eight because they were duplicative of other routes that were already included in the system. So those riders were already served by other routes in the system. So the only two routes remaining that meet this threshold of 10 boardings per hour. And again, remember, according to Jarrett Walker and his analysis, 10 boardings per hour is the minimum threshold for fixed route bus service, the worst performing routes in his terminology. So the only routes pre-COVID that meet that criteria are three and seven, the two fixed routes that the DCTA board is considering keeping as fixed routes because the ridership justifies it. And then post-COVID you'll see or during COVID, post-COVID I should not say, during this particular pandemic, none of the routes meet that threshold, except, I mean, you can see route seven gets very, very close, but none of them currently meet that threshold. But the board certainly has not been focused on COVID ridership. We all expect that that will come back at some point and hopefully very soon. And so they're making this decision based on the pre-COVID ridership. So this slide just gives you a little bit of a cost and ridership comparison. And this is not at all apples to apples. I'm just trying to give you some ability to compare the two services. They cannot be directly compared certainly, but I did want to present a little bit of the numbers and the data that the DCTA has been looking at and making this decision. So annual cost for VIA for the base service and phase one add-ons, which you have been presented to by DCTA several times. And I think Nicole can cover that more in a minute if you have any questions about what's included in that base and phase one. But the annual cost is 5.3 million. The ridership misses a low end and a high end range of ridership. This is estimated obviously based on coming out of COVID. They're certainly looking at what the ridership is today on the system and estimating the speed at which people will then come back to the system. And with all the additional service that's being offered by the VIA on-demand program, how many additional riders the service might attract. The cost per trip varies very widely based on the ridership numbers. So depending on how this service actually performs, we'll determine the cost per trip. But based on their estimated ridership, the cost per trip would be somewhere between $11.85 and $7 per trip. And that just gives us a benchmark of the efficiency of the service. So it's obviously not the only factor, but something important just to be able to compare the efficiency of the two services. And then the vehicle hours that are going to be delivered as part of this base and phase one add-ons is 129,941 annually. That's the annual vehicle hours. So just to give you a little bit of a comparison, the Connect bus service, and this is again in Denton, Lewisville, and Highland Village. So all of those services combined, not just the city of Denton, but the total annual costs of that service is $6.3 million. The ridership, and I'm just giving you a range here as well so that you can compare the two. So current ridership or fiscal year 20 ridership, so during COVID was 347,174. And then on the high end, looking at the last six years, the highest Connect bus service ridership that we encountered in any year was 589,404. So that just gives you a range in order to compare the two. And then based on that ridership, the cost per trip ranges from $18 down to 1070. And then the vehicle hours that were provided as a result of that service were 73,107. So I should mention a couple of things about this. One, it's not at all an apples to apples comparison because the VIA service includes greater coverage, it includes greater frequency. It also includes the service on Sundays and holidays that I mentioned. And it includes better connections to DART because there's a component of the Phase 1 add-ons that the DCTA staff and board have been working on that will allow people to connect to the DART Greenline in the extra hours. So the DART Greenline runs till 1 a.m. DCTA A train ends at 10. So there's a gap there. And we have heard from citizens in Lewisville and Denton that that's an issue in taking the DART train back to Trinity Mills, they can't get home. So part of this service is to provide on-demand that will connect to Trinity Mills and take people either to Lewisville, Highland Village or Denton so that they can better utilize DART and get home during that gap hours. The other thing I wanted to mention on the connect service and the cost is that there's a wide range. This includes both direct and indirect cost. And there is certainly a question about how much indirect cost will be eliminated as part of the VIA service. And so that's a savings that can be quantified. So the range that connect service or the bus service could be as high as 10.1 million, and it could be as low as 5.4 million. So the number that you're seeing here reflects 35% of the indirect cost being achieved as savings as part of that connect service. So I wanted to mention one other thing and then I will stop and we are all available for questions and we certainly want to leave plenty of time for that. So this slide just gives you a snapshot of the cost per passenger trip of the DCTA connect service. This does not include the UNT routes, but just the connect service in Denton, Lewisville and Highland Village comparing it to the other agencies around the state. And I will say this is not an apples to apples comparison either. The other agencies are much larger and they have higher ridership and the ridership really determines the cost per trip because there's a significant amount of fixed costs associated with fixed route bus service. And so the ridership really drives that cost per trip. It's not a reflection on DCTA at all, because again, the ridership is really what drives that cost per trip. But I did want to mention it to you because I do think it's a benchmark that we should aspire to at some point in the future. And I should mention as well, the highest performing route, so route seven and all of the UNT routes do have comparable if not less cost per trip than these numbers of the peer agencies at Dart, Trinity Metro and Capital Metro. Route three does not, but it's very close. And again, it's the second highest ridership route. And so the board certainly feels like it's on the cusp and should remain as fixed route. So I will just pause there and we are all available to answer any questions you may have. This is- Questions. Okay, go ahead. I'm sorry. Council Member Byrd? Yes. I'll go first. Yep, sure. Okay, I just had a couple of questions here. I was looking at the cost per trip, and my question is, what all entails, you know, what's the details in that number? It looks like it's a little higher. Does it have anything to do with just the number of people that are riding or does it have some salaries included in all of that? It does, yes. So when I said direct and indirect cost, so the direct cost would be the direct cost of providing the service. So labor, the buses themselves, the indirect cost would be facilities, all of the additional administrative staff that go into administering the entire program. DCTA staff can certainly add some detail there and elaborate on it as well, but that is the difference. So that cost per trip includes all of those costs fully loaded to understand what is the cost per passenger trip to deliver that service. Okay, so I'm concerned about the- my primary concern at this particular point is the advent of losing the labor part of it. I know that I have had a number of people to connect with me about the opportunity for them to lose their jobs, so I understand that these same people will have an opportunity to apply for this other particular service, but is that a weighty factor on this $11 in- I don't have the number in front of me, but the $11 for the ridership is the- it's a cost for the employees, a heavy rider, on that. So if we were to go with the other- if we want to go with the other route system, the other system, I'm just thinking about those people that might lose their job right now for this question. Absolutely, and that's a concern that's shared by everyone. So I will tell you, my understanding is that the hourly rates are comparable to what is currently being paid to DCTA drivers, and there is a huge shortage of CDL drivers around the state, so both Dart and Trinity Metro are always seeking additional CDL drivers, but DCTA certainly may want to add some additional to that question. I noticed that the ridership was higher, estimated higher for the new system. How does that happen? How do you justify such a significant number? I do understand that you say it is not tit for tat exactly, but the numbers just seem so much higher with this new system. I'm not understanding the justification for that. So I'm happy to answer that question. These are ridership projections that have been provided by VIA based on the level of service that's being proposed, as well as density within the zones that are being proposed. But they are just estimates. Just estimates. And I will add to that as well, Councilmember, that the coverage area for the VIA service is so much larger, that there's so many more citizens that will have access to the service. I think that's a huge driver behind the difference in ridership. You said -- so it looks like a portion of this did not include the UNT riders. I was just trying to see if this is also part of that higher ridership. I can hear you, but I can't really, really hear you very clearly. Did you say that as part of justifying the higher ridership? At some point, you said something about the UNT connect is not a part of a number. Can you go back and tell me what that's about? Yes, absolutely. So this entire analysis is focused on the City of Denton connect service. So the UNT routes are not being considered to convert to on-demand because they have such high ridership that they're already very efficient service. So those routes, all of the UNT routes will continue as fixed route bus service as well as routes 3 and 7 in Denton because those are the highest performing routes. I'm sorry. I hope you can hear me okay. I can hear you because I know what I'm listening for now. Okay, good. That definitely helps. Now, what about the marketing program, the marketing side of all of this? I just seem like, you know, just as a regular citizen, which I was just a few weeks ago, it just seemed like I didn't hear a lot about DCTA that would make me want to get to use the system. Tell me about your marketing program prior to this proposal. Pardon me. I mean, you're welcome to answer, but I just want to remind you, Council Member Byrd, we're also going to hear from DCTA. Ms. Byrd, who's not related to you, I don't believe. No, not. Doesn't represent DCTA. She's our consultant, and we've actually got the marketing. Okay, thank you. But, you know, go ahead as you wish. No, I'm sure Nicole would love to answer that question. They have a very robust marketing plan planned for this launch of this service, and Nicole can add to that. Sure. I'm happy to provide some details. So we have explored new marketing techniques to promote the public involvement plan for the GoZone service and to educate passengers on what the final service will be and educate them about the launch and how you ride. We will be mirroring a lot of our existing activities that we've been using for the public involvement period. I will tell you from a data perspective and an engagement perspective, we have seen incredible results from our public involvement outreach. And so we feel pretty confident that mirroring those activities will result in a widespread education of the community on how to utilize the service. Additionally, we plan to provide kind of on-site and virtual trainings for folks that need assistance with how to purchase, whether it's via the mobile app, or actually at a facility or over the phone. So we'll kind of have some on-site and virtual assistance if someone needs a one-on-one walkthrough. So we plan to, again, just like we did for the public involvement plan, to have a widespread education plan that would support the service that our board approves for launch on September 7. - Thank you. - Anything else, Council Member Perk for now? - I'm done. Thank you. - Yeah. Okay. Council Member McGuire. - Thank you, Mayor Perkett and Meltzer. So I wanted to ask about the sort of overall costs. And I know that you mentioned it's sort of, these are just projections and it's not apples to apples. But I believe I recall Mr. Suarez telling us in the work session last week that... Sorry, I'm trying to find the numbers here. I recall him saying that the VIA service would be slightly more expensive than the Connect service. But if I can find the dang slide, you just showed us a slide saying it would cost less. So I was wondering if you could, if you or Raymond or Nicole could speak to that a little bit. - Yes. And we both can. So Raymond and Nicole, please add to this as well. The difference is whether you're talking about just the base service that's being provided by VIA or the phase one or phase two add-ons. So the numbers that I showed you today are just the base service and phase one add-ons, because that's really the service that the board has discussed so far and seems to have support for. Obviously that final decision has not been made yet. The phase two add-ons, when you add that in, it does make it more expensive than the Connect service. So that's really the question. And certainly on the numbers that I showed you, if the phase two add-ons are added, we don't yet have that comparison as far as the access service, because that's something that's being contemplated in phase two. And those cost numbers, I don't know that the board has seen yet, but staff certainly may want to elaborate on that as well. - And I would just add to that, that the costs that Brandy is sharing today are those direct costs, specifically related to labor, wages and fuel. There are also those indirect costs related to like facilities and the staff to manage programs and the customer service and all of that, that is not included. And so when you combine the direct costs and the indirect costs, there is a slight increase in the cost of overall service, but the number of service hours of what's being proposed is higher than what we're currently operating today. - Okay, thank you. Yeah, that clarifies that for me. I appreciate that. So I also, if I remember council member Byrd correctly, I thought she was asking about DCTA's marketing of the connect service, like pre-COVID, which if that was what you were asking council member Byrd, that kind of ties into my next question, which is, prior to this proposal of the via on demand service, what steps did DCTA take to improve ridership on fixed routes? Was, I mean, was there an effort made to sort of tweak the current system and improve ridership as opposed to sort of abandoning it abruptly? - Sure. I'm happy to answer that question. So I would say it's a combination of many things. So from a grassroots level, the promotion of services as well as programs that tie into those services. So whether it's like our discount pass programs for social service agencies or groups, or even with the schools, like we provide like a summer pass for the students and we had various programs that were promoted and developed in order to drive ridership. We also participated in a comprehensive operational analysis about four years ago that looked at the existing connect routes across our system and modified them in order to gain additional ridership. And then most significantly, we put together two different fare systems in place that did show increased ridership. So the first of that being the A train free fare zone, that would be from Hebron to the Trinity mill station, as well as from Medpart to the DDTC, where we provide free service if you're just traveling between those two kind of mini destinations. And then the additional fare modification that we made about a year and a half ago is that when the regional fare increased, we are part of a regional fare program with the other transit agencies in the area. DART leads the development of any fares as part of the regional perspective. And so they were promoting and recommending an increase to their regional fare. And DCTA chose to go ahead and accept that fare so that our passengers got the benefit of the entire system. But we decreased our local fares so that we could give passengers the option to buy like one local DCTA pass and a local DART pass. And it would actually be cheaper than what the previous regional fare pass was. And we did see a significant increase in ridership. Just from that, we also saw an increase in our fare revenue from that specific fare adjustment as well. There wasn't long after that that COVID hit, so we saw a reduction there. I also mentioned during our presentation that fixed route bus can be impacted by a lot of different things. As we talked about during the conversation, amenities, sidewalks, curb cuts, those types of investments are really important because they can be barriers to fixed route. The other big initiative that I guess data point that really hasn't been shared in the analysis and we've shared with our board is when our board asked us to put together the metrics in the five-year history, they asked for some context about what were some of the impacts that caused the reductions in service. And I would say more so in Denton than in the rest of our service area, there's been significant amount of infrastructure, road infrastructure on University, on Hickory, on Bonnie Bray over the last three to four years that while we're making improvements in the service, there's no question there's a lot of stops that were not accessible. Trying to get through those corridors really caused a lot of on-time performance issues. And so when you just look at the data, the data doesn't necessarily tell the whole story. And so to Nicole's point, there's a lot of different variables that go into it. I do believe to Councilman Davis's comments around fair pricing, just in typical economics, if you have inventory, drop your price, make it more competitive, people will use it. We actually did that. He had provided some comments. I want to say it was pre-COVID, we went back, we looked at pricing, we talked to the board about it. They were in favor of reducing the cost for the fares and we did see to Nicole's point a significant increase. So it's hard to say that marketing alone won't necessarily change things. It's a combination of things, but I wanted to provide that additional data point because the infrastructure improvements, while they've helped the city in so many ways, they certainly didn't help on-time performance and the speed and accuracy of our service. And that, in my opinion, was probably the biggest contributor over the last three to four years in the performance concerns and ridership barriers on the system. Specifically to the Denton construction, we had to reroute the majority of our fixed routes, probably anywhere between four and six times over a period of about two years to accommodate the construction. So to Raymond's point, that did have significant impact and communicating that obviously to our passengers was a fairly large struggle, but luckily we have very dedicated riders and so they sign up for rider alerts and we're able to target them directly based on the route that they ride, but it did have impacts to our overall ridership for sure. And as I mentioned, one of the benefits of VIA is with a big bus, it's really hard to make left and right turns on alternative roads. With vans, it's much easier to get around those types of situations and pick people up. So it has a lot more flexibility and ability to access, provide accessibility on the system than the bus service, but I just wanted to provide that additional context since you're asking the question about what we did to market the existing system. Hopefully that helps. Yeah, it does. And I really appreciate that you're, you know, taking a broader view that it's not just about what DCTA has done, that the city bears a great deal of responsibility for, you know, making DCTA services accessible. So yeah, I appreciate that. Just while we're on the topic that you raised, business-wise, would you mind sharing what percent of DCTA revenues Fairbox does represent? Because I really don't know. Percentage-wise, it's a smaller, I'm sorry. I'm sure it's overwhelmingly sales tax. It's overwhelmingly, it's 51% sales tax, about 40, I want to say 43%. It's changing. I was looking at budget numbers this morning for FY22. I'd say the Fairbox revenue is less than 10% of the revenue that comes in to support the system. I don't have the exact number in front of me. My apologies. I'll look it up more on this conversation. That scales it anyway. So if we don't have any more questions right now for Ms. Burt, do you want to go ahead and give the DCTA presentation? If you had planned to do one? Yeah, I would be happy to. Nicole, before I wrap it up, I was just going to turn it over to the DCTA Board Chair, Chris Watts, if you wanted to say a few things before we finish. Thank you. Thank you for that. Just to share with you a couple of thoughts from the Board, you know, basically is what the philosophy has been. And I understand about the construction and I understand about that that may have impacted ridership to some degree. But I think it's a combination of a lot of things. If you look at the data, we're back up to the ridership pre-COVID that we were back in 2015, which is about 500 and something thousand riders, which let's make sure we understand when we talk about riders, as illustrated in the slides, you have to do some calculations to try to get how many people that that represents. You know, how many individuals? And as you could tell, it was, you know, five or six per hour. The board has been totally committed. Prior to this new board, the old board was totally committed to that main mission of how do we provide the best public transportation system for the dollars that we have and for the capabilities that we have as an agency. DCTA is a very unique agency. There's not very many agencies that are situated with member cities that, you know, sort of have not autonomy, but, you know, different levels of service for each member city. So when you look at other agencies and you try to compare things, as Brandy said, it's not necessarily an apples to apples. But what we all have in common is we want people to have an alternative. We want people to have a choice that will get them where they need to go in an efficient manner that will motivate them to use public transportation instead of using a vehicle. Now, for those who don't have a vehicle, it becomes even that much more critical that we provide those kind of services and those kind of efficient services to get them where they need to be on a timely manner. So this has not been something that this decision has not happened overnight. It's certainly not happened in a vacuum. There's been a lot of analysis on this, understanding that it is a very far departure from the paradigm that we've been operating on over the last 10 years since DCTA has come into existence with the Denton bus service. But when you look at the data and you look at our ridership pre-COVID in 2019 was at the level a little higher than 2010 or 2015. And you look at the sales tax dollars that were paid in 2010 to support that ridership, which it did support it. I mean, there wasn't a budget issue. The DCTA staff and board at that time, I mean, they managed the finances in such a way that they were able to do that. So this is an attempt to try to figure out how do we provide better service? I mean, the service hours, what is it? I think it's 129,000 for Via roughly and 173 for Denton Connect. That's almost, that's over a 50% increase in service hours, if my math is correct. Plus in Denton and in Lewisville, you have your zones where people can pick up those on-demands have increased, especially with the add-ons. So that certainly and the headways are 15 minutes and the location. So I understand the concerns and quite frankly, I really appreciated the feedback last Tuesday because one thing that I heard that I'm going to make a recommendation to the board is I think it's, and it's not that it hasn't been said before, but you know, sometimes my memory fades me that, you know, how long will the fixed routes that are proposed to sort of transition out, how long will they be running concurrently with the on-demand system? And I thought I heard two weeks or something. That's not been a board decision. The board has not made a decision on that. So I don't know where that number came from, but I think it's a worthy discussion of the board to say, hey, we need to make sure that there's a big enough transition period to where we give everyone the opportunity to be fully educated and not just the passengers, but DCTA to understand what are our gaps because the concern that I heard last Tuesday was, okay, those, and I heard the term middle-class, you know, they'll, I guess, figure it out. But what about those people who are in social services agencies, those that, you know, may not have access to telephones, you know, those that are experiencing homelessness, how do we help those people? How will they take advantage of the system? And I can tell you, the board and DCTA staff is 100% committed, more than 100%, to determine what those needs are and how we address those needs. So I feel confident that we will be able to do that in a way that's even more efficient than the way that we're meeting those needs today. So the philosophy has always been, how do we move more people conveniently that helps them get where they need to be? I have, you know, we're looking at what would it cost to take the bus service to a 15-minute headway? You know, to try to compare, well, if you're doing a fixed route system and you've got a 15-minute headway on on-demand, what would that cost with a fixed route system? Understanding, though, that the on-demand will provide more locations for pickup and more locations for drop-off. So the feedback has been wonderful. I think we have time as we move forward to take a look at it. But just rest assured that I don't think that DCTA over the last four years or the City of Denton have, have there been some things happen that have contributed to lower ridership with construction and all those kinds of things? Yes. I mean, that goes without saying. Is that the crux and the totality of the issue? I don't think so. I think what the issue is people are having to wait. And I will tell you, the City of Denton has also asked and DCTA has complied in the capacity that they have that they can. What do we do with our bus stops? I mean, I'm not sure how many covered shelters we have in the City of Denton. I've lost track of that number. But, you know, you often see people standing out just along a right of way or on a sidewalk or sitting, you know, on the ground. And that has been something that the City and DCTA have worked on for many years to try to figure out and continue to figure out how can we do more of that. But as technology has advanced and as these other types of modalities, I mean, Councilmember Davis made a statement that, you know, some people depend on fixed route buses. And I made the comment, well, that's because that's all they've been offered. That's because that's all that we've sort of tried to create. There are people who do depend on public transportation. And to me, that is the theme. That is the statement that has to be at the crux of every deliberation and every analysis we do when we're looking at how do we move more people. So the feedback has been great. I think that we can take some of that and tweak some of this with some additional data. I certainly know that DCTA staff is committed to continuing their mission in the best way possible. I know that the Board is doing the same thing. So I just would simply say keep the questions coming because it spurs that kind of collaboration and dialogue and brainstorming that really is what creates the maximum decision. I mean, we're not making this decision in a vacuum. We're still the decision, you know, we've moved it down this path because the data, the data at least that we have available seems to indicate that this is worth a shot. Now, does that mean I'm going to be honest with you and this is the first time I've ever said this? My fear, my fear on all this is it will be widely successful. And if it's widely successful, then guess what? We'll have to come back and figure out, okay, how do we, you know, if it's widely successful, you know, does the on-demand costs grow to a point where, you know, there's some you can bring back in a fit? I mean, there's so many options that are available. And that's why I don't want us to get locked into this thought process of this is a one and done thing. This is simply an option that we're moving forward based upon the data, based upon the feedback of people who also there's feedback who don't share the same sentiment. And those are the people that we want to really hear from so we can try to craft a decision. Personally, during the transition of this where you're having the buses and the on-demand running concurrently, I think we need to figure out a way to put people on each bus who can answer questions, who can either, you know, take down, here's my, here's my obstacle. I don't have a phone. I don't have this, you know, get some contact names. It's, I mean, really get at the grassroots level to where we're hearing the actual needs. And that will help us better address it because it's going to be a, it's going to be a transition, but I think we're going to be able to do it. And there will be kinks, there will be, you know, some obstacles, but the more we can resolve on the front end, the less we have to resolve, you know, once it gets implemented. So I think the board is open to doing everything that we can to make this as, as smooth a transition and to meet the needs that, that, that are out there in a way that after a while people will say, well, gosh, I can get in on this corner and I don't have to wait 30 minutes for a bus and I can get dropped off, you know, 20 yards, 30 yards, 40 yards from where I'm going. That, that is appealing if everything else is even just equal, you know, or even if it's even a little bit slider cost, because I think those intangibles are what the customer, and let's not lose fact of it's really the customer, it's the rider that we're really trying to benefit here. And I feel confident that whatever, however this turns out, we will find a way that better helps the rider get where they're going. So that's really all I have. I mean, I, I really can't answer a lot of these specific detailed questions like the, like Nicole and Raymond can, but I certainly can share with you sort of the thoughts from the board as far as the thought process of moving in this direction. If I can offer some individual input and I appreciate the fact that, you know, you're really making an effort to soak it all in. And I'm, I'm really speaking more frankly as a guy who introduced new products for 30 years. I would encourage resisting the idea that it must be a transition when what you're trying to meet a whole array of needs. And I think if you want to, in almost any industry, any service offering, if you want to maximize the coverage of, you know, of the needs that are out there, you would, you would think in terms of a product portfolio that suggests to you that a fixed route meets a somewhat different need. I mean, it's all transportation, but within that category fixed route meets a different need than on demand. And it also meets a slightly different need than payable, right? That, and that if you really want to maximize the opportunity and minimize the risk that you're going to screw something up big, you would add features, add components to your product portfolio and then adjust the mix. What you're trying to do is maximize what they call turf, total unduplicated reach and frequency, right? Some, some people, you know, are going to like two of the three options. Some are going to use all three, but what you want is the, is the portfolio that, that gives you the maximum coverage of the, of the customer demand. So I, you know, I would suggest, I mean, and I'm somebody who is quite persuaded that for many people, you going on my schedule instead of me having to go on yours is going to be more convenient. I'm quite persuaded that for some people, you going on my route is more convenient than me having to go on your route. So I totally get that. There's a difference between, now I'm going, I've worked in several industries and one was baked goods. Okay. So this, I would just say to you, there's a difference between a brownie and a brownie mix. Some people said you can't, Pepper Farm can't do a brownie cause you can get really good brownie mixes. Well, they're totally different consumer decision-making processes. If I knew, if I want to step off the train, you know, and, and get my ride, that's halable. And that is entirely different need than, Oh, I got to plan this thing and figure out how to work this app and all that. It's just a different consumer decision-making process. So that, that, that's my main point. If you add, add the elements, there's absolutely, well, I wouldn't say absolutely, but there's no apparent need to say we're committed. We already know that the other thing is bad and this thing is good. And it's only a matter of the transition. In fact, this had originally been presented to this committee as, as a pilot to test our way in. And, you know, that, that, you know, desire seems to have evaporated, but I think that that was, that, that was right. So I'll, I'll, I'll have more comments later, but I just wanted to, you know, respond to that point. Cause I know we've got some more to hear from DCTA. Thank you, chair. Chairman, if I may, let me, let me answer a question that was asked earlier about revenue. Sales tax revenue is 51%. Our federal grants for operating capital roughly are 42% of the revenue that comes in. Contract services, which is revenue. A portion of that you consider Fairbox is 6.2%. The actual passenger revenues that are more attributable to the Fairbox is less than 1%. So when I was saying it was less than 10%, it was actually, I was thinking about the contract revenue and the, and the passenger revenue. So it was less than 10%. Yeah, it was less than 10%. So it wasn't necessarily wrong, but it was a, it's significantly less than, than 10%. Yes. Almost, almost a rounding error, it sounds like. Yes, that's correct. Which reminds me of how we seem to be summoning council member Davis to mind a lot today. So I don't know if he's listening, but you know, to his point, it does make you wonder, this is another bit of input. You know, should the idea of taking Fair out of the question to maximize the ridership, you know, is that worth considering when you consider that it's, you know, almost undetectable as a revenue source. Now, I would just add one more point. If you take Fair out of the picture, well, first of all, you're talking, you're the concern you raised when we spoke last, President Suarez was that people would view the buses housing instead of transportation. But when you're talking about a little vehicle, it seems a little less likely. That's just an opinion. But then also if you take Fair out of the issue, you become hailable. You don't have to add technology to be able to take a swipe. And if you only on, let's say on the facts, if your opinion and the opinion of consultants is that you still need to run a big dang bus for three people or five people, whatever it is, you could experiment with running the little vehicle on the fixed route. Maybe it'll be electric someday too and not be polluting. And you could try that without the ability to collect fares for a week or two. I'm just putting that out there. Anyway, thanks for that perspective about how we've certainly captured the feedback and we'll provide that back to the board. Thank you very much for the input. All right, chairman, chairman patient to call your turn. I will go ahead and just share my screen. And I promise I will only take less than 10 minutes to kind of go through this. But I will say that city staff did ask that I provide just at least in the packet, an update based on the feedback that we received at the June 8th council meeting. And so while I will not go over all of that feedback in detail, it is included in your packet should you want to review it. So just as a reminder, we are still in the public involvement feedback process. And so we have dctafeedback.net as an option. If you know, council members or the public stakeholders organizations would like to provide that feedback, we are still doing a wide array of stakeholder presentations for holding virtual town halls. We're also attending a lot of community meetings. So in fact, we will be at the Juneteenth celebration in Denton talking about the proposed service and collecting feedback as well. And so all of those outreach efforts have proven to be very successful. We have gotten an incredible amount of comment back from the public and our stakeholders, which we plan to share with our board. And as I mentioned, city staff asked that I just kind of provide a recap of the information that I sent out after the June 8th Denton city council meeting. So I did send out an email of follow up items after that meeting that I knew city staff forwarded to the council. And there were a lot of attachments in there. So I just kind of wanted to talk about them high level. Based on your feedback for the council's feedback, we did hear that many of the council members had not necessarily concerns with the actual service itself, but the implementation of the service, and that perhaps a more hybrid approach might be appropriate. So we did go ahead and add an item to our June 24th dcta board meeting to have a preliminary conversation with our board about some of the feedback that we've collected thus far. So we will be sharing kind of a preliminary feedback report with the board. It does not capture all of the feedback that we've captured, you know, through the end of the public involvement period, because that ends on the 25th and our board meeting is on the 24th. But it will capture the feedback that we've collected from April 19 through June 11. And so we do plan to have a discussion with our board next Thursday to talk about some of that feedback, the trends in that feedback, and to see if any sort of modification in the service delivery would be required prior to bringing it back to the board in July for adoption. And Chair Watts had requested during that city council meeting that we provide that final transformation initiative report from Accenture. And so I did include that as well. And that's also included in your packet. And this is a presentation that was presented to the DCTA board of directors in December of last year that just captures all of their analysis that they conducted on both our overall efficiency as an agency as well as well as route and train performance. And so I did call out a few of the pages within that study that you might find helpful. So the ridership and boarding details which Brandi actually shared in her presentation can be found in that final report from Accenture on pages 46 and 47. And then there were some additional route recommendations that Accenture made based on their analysis. And so they put several options together based on density and route productivity. So you can read through those. That's on pages 36 through 61. It's not captured on a singular slide. But if you were interested in what Accenture's analysis resulted in in regards to our route performance and some of their recommendations, you can reference those pages. I also provided via case studies that I followed up after last month's mobility committee meeting. And I did want to reference that those case studies were based on Chair Meltzer's request about case studies regarding ridership. So those via case studies are not related to programs that are similar to DCTA. Those are specifically about where ridership has been much higher than anticipated and then also where ridership did not meet the estimations and they had to modify the programs post launch to increase ridership. I will be following up with the council with specific via case studies about programs that are similar to ours. And then Mayor Hutzpick had asked for just some more information about the promotional materials that we've been sharing as part of our public outreach efforts. And so we did provide kind of an advertisement that's in your packet. But also you can go to DCTAfeedback.net, go to our media center and hit the promotional materials download and you can find sample content for any medium, graphics, anything that you're looking for there. And so we've been working really closely with the City of Denton staff and they've been an excellent partner in helping us share that message so that we can get as much feedback as possible. So those next steps, as I mentioned, so we are still on schedule to take the final proposed plan back to our board on July 22nd for review and consideration of approval. We do have some time between now and then, and based on feedback that we receive from our board next month as to any modifications that need to be made. I will say that if they are some minor modifications, so whether that's extending the time period in which fixed routes and GoZone operate at the same time, or if it's a slight modification in the zone, we would have the time to make those modifications and then bring it back to the board for approval on July 22nd. If it does come back from our board that they would like to look at more significant changes, maybe particularly to the Denton zone, that will require additional time to model the service and then we would be required to take it back out to the public and follow that public involvement process before we can take it back to our board for formal adoption. So I will say that there are kind of two paths we could take based on DCTA board feedback at next week's meeting. And then, as I mentioned earlier, we will have a comprehensive marketing communications education campaign to ensure that those who are transitioning over to this GoZone service have all of the tools necessary to do so successfully, and that will also include kind of virtual and in-person trainers. We will have people on vehicles, we'll have people stationed at our downtown Denton Transit Center and to Chair Watts's point, it is our high priority to make sure that this transition is as easy as possible for passengers. They're our first priority and so we'll certainly be focusing our attention to specifically the education of passengers. I did want to provide just some other DCTA updates for the new committee members. I typically attend every single month and provide general DCTA news. It just so happens to be focused on GoZone the last couple of months. But I did want to mention that we have just reopened our downtown Denton Transit Center. If you'll recall, we had closed the downtown Denton Transit Center due to COVID. And so we did a soft opening on June 7th. We now have core hours, so it's open in the morning. There's a break during lunch and then it's open in the afternoon and the evening. And we have that break in the middle of the day in order to make sure that deep cleans are conducted in the facility. We're also limiting capacity and requiring masks and social distancing and doing high touch point cleans during those operating hours. And so far, that soft opening has been very successful. And so we continue as the mask mandate is lifted, we hope to bring the DDTC back to our full operating hours. And we'll also be looking at potentially increasing those hours and days of operation with the GoZone plan because the GoZone service now is operated more days of the week and longer hours of the day. I also wanted to mention that the A-Train's 10th birthday is coming up. This Friday, we will be doing free A-Train rides all day with the code word A-Train birthday. We are doing goodies for passengers who are on the train. We've got a virtual scavenger hunt, a lot of really fun activities in order to celebrate the A-Train's 10th birthday. So we encourage everyone to participate and again, free rides on the A-Train on the 18th. I wanted to mention our community outreach education campaign. We launched this at the start of COVID to provide some virtual resources to those who are doing at-home schooling, our teachers who are looking for some additional curriculum. We have been updating our community education resources available at ridedcta.net. And we just recently launched a new safety book, which is also a coloring book and new summer related coloring sheets that are available. So those are available for easy download. They're great resources. Our social service agency round table that we hold quarterly, both in Lewisville and in Denton is coming up. So mark August 17th and August 19th on your calendars. Anyone is welcome to attend, but we typically have anywhere between 20 and 30 social service agencies attend where we talk about DCTA news that would be of interest to them, how we can assist them with their clientele, and then any general challenges that they have to see how we can work collaboratively to get them a solution. And then just a reminder that even though the governor lifted the mask mandate, DCTA still falls under the federal mask mandate. And so we are still requiring masks in all of our vehicles, at our stops and stations, as well as in our operating facilities. So just a little reminder there. So I know I went through that really quickly. That concludes my update, but I'm certainly happy to answer any questions that the committee may have. Okay. Questions, comments? And Council Member McGuire, if you're, I mean, Bird, if your hand is up, I can't see it. Yes, I had one question about the, the liability cost with, you know, using buses versus cars how is that, how is that weighted? How is that going to work for us? Sure. So DCTA has been working with our insurance company and as well as our legal representation. We have specific liability thresholds in place. And so in order for VIA to even be pre-qualified as a potential vendor for us to consider, they had to either meet or exceed those liability requirements. So we do have that in place. And I think Raymond might want to add something. Many of our contractors, whether it be rail or private contractors are also typically covered under our liability insurance. So there's multiple layers of coverage. We're also, we have tort liability so that much like the police cities do. So it limits the exposure, but typically we'll have our insurance in place. The contractor has their insurance in place. So it shouldn't be much different than what we're operating today. The only other question that I have is I heard you say something about central location pickup. And this is where the, this is where that goes on. And the door to door pickup, is this a true door to door pickup or is there certain areas that you want people to be at? Sure. So this, this service is considered curb to curb. They also provide door to door service if you are, if you self-select in the booking process as having a wheeled mobility device or if you're ADA qualified. And so then it would take you door to door. But in most cases, this is a curb to curb service. It's quite more convenient than our existing bus stops because what they consider for door to door or curb to curb is much closer than what our actual bus stop location provides. So I like, always like to provide the example. If you're going to a Walgreens, they're going to drop you off in the parking lots to Walgreens. They're not going to drop you off in the street outside of Walgreens. If you are ADA qualified or you self-select and so having a wheelchair device, they will actually take you to the door. They would also provide you service like at your, at the front of your house. So it does provide both. At this point in time, we are not recommend, recommending kind of centralized like hailing zones. Via's recommendation is for us to provide the curb to curb and door to door service and be able to look at data that would show us kind of the hot points of where people are primarily, you know, requesting rides or requesting a drop off. And then based on that data, we could create kind of hailable zones that would be available so that you wouldn't have to book up front. You could actually just go to that location where we would most likely have a bus stop with a shelter in place and you could go to that location and you could just wait for the next vehicle to drive by. The cost of that addition to service would be, you know, based on how often we would want a vehicle to drive by. So there are a lot of parameters regarding that, but it is definitely a potential as a future phase. Thank you very much. Did you have any further questions or comments? Not at this time. Thank you. I have a little more to add. I do not envy Chair Watts in having to convey the guidance from seven different voices. Yet again, Councilmember Davis made quite a good point in response to another Councilmember saying we don't speak as a body unless we vote. So you've got seven voices plus all the voices from the public. But I think it would be meaningful if we could find a way to, in work session and then ultimately with a resolution, craft our instruction or wishes or guidance, I guess I would say, our guidance to our representative. And I would further suggest that it is probably not all that helpful if it is just like split decision four to three or whatever, but to see where as a body we have at least like a super majority if not unanimity to provide guidance as a Council. And now the timing becomes complicated for doing that since you've got a meeting next time we meet, your meeting. My opinion, it's only an opinion, is that you'd be pretty safe if you wanted to suggest that you're representing a consensus. You'd be pretty safe in moving forward to add something, but I would say there's at least a diversity of opinion or not clear guidance yet, maybe by next Tuesday, but not in time for your meeting probably. There's not clear guidance on taking anything away or carving anything in stone about how much or when, transitioning. And I realize you're responding to your staff input and all that, but if you wanted to have clear guidance from Council to you, my opinion is it'd be great if we could craft a resolution, if you felt, I think you'd be on completely uncontroversial grounds to, and I look to my fellow committee members, I think you'd be on controversial grounds to say, yeah, let's start trying this thing. Certainly the parallel part, but I invite comment from my colleagues on that point. Council Member McGuire, sorry, I saw her hand first because it's bigger on my screen. Yeah, I think that you characterized that well. To be honest, I think that I'm probably the most, well, Council Member Arminter and I are probably the most suspicious of a plan that includes cutting significant numbers of fixed bus routes, but yeah, I do think that Council Member Mayor Pratam Meltzer has accurately characterized my position that I'm not opposed to trying out an on-demand service as an addition or as part of a multimodal system that still includes significant fixed routes, although they may not look like they do look now. But yeah, I think that that's one thing, I don't want to speak for the council members who aren't here, but I suspect that you're right, that we are all in agreement that some kind of multimodal system that includes on-demand service is something we would all be interested in. My opinion is, hey, if they're both out there or multiple things are out there and nobody takes the fixed bus route anymore and everybody is on on-demand, I think that we might reach a different conclusion, but my point is we haven't reached that conclusion. Council Member Bird, do you have a comment as well? I just want to say that I really appreciate the opportunity for the on-demand service. I was very skeptical of it earlier, but as we think about the way that our system, our lifestyle is changing and we are meeting the needs of a whole new crop of people out there, I'm thinking about the millennial people that are used to on-demand everything. So it just sounds fairly reasonable to me. I appreciate the opportunity to have a little bit of input on it personally. Looking forward to being able to use this service myself whenever I don't want to really drive my car. So yeah, I'll just leave it there. Thank you all so much for everything that you all have done and being new to the council, I'm just really appreciating learning all of the aspects of in the details of what it takes to make things happen. So I'll keep that with me and I'll appreciate the opportunity to ride when it's time. Thank you. Council Member Bird, if I can press you a little, would you support or not support the idea that this committee would ask staff to communicate to council that we'd like to discuss a resolution to give guidance to our representative on this? Sir, I would definitely support that. Thank you. Okay. So staff, if you'll note that, I appreciate that. Anything else would be good on this item? Council Member McGuire? I just wanted to, I guess, specify that yes, I'm definitely in favor of hammering out a resolution because this is nuanced, it's complex. I think even those of us who have strong feelings about it one way or another still have a pretty nuanced position on it. So I think, yes, I think we need to really work out what we as a body want to see from DCTA on this. Well, I thank all of you for coming and sharing the data and your thoughts and all the great insights and very optimistic prospects for really meeting our residents transit needs. Thank you. Well, thank you. And if the committee or the council has any further questions, please feel free to reach out. We're always happy to respond. All right, then. I think we can go backwards now and that'll close item D and go back to item C. Receive a report and hold the discussion regarding City of Denton transportation slash mobility project status report. Mr. Poulster with us today? Can I request a 60 second break? That is 45 seconds. Okay. So we'll take a break at 1027 for how about five minutes? That should be enough. That's more than I need, but yes. We'll time it. Okay, Mr. Chair, we are ready to reconvene the meeting. Great. Okay. We are back from break at 1033 and open item reopen, I guess, item D, receive a report and hold the discussion regarding updates regarding City of Denton transportation slash mobility project status report. Okay. Hello, my name is John Poulster. I'm with Innovative Transportation Solutions and I'll be going over, not really sure, let's look that way, I guess, where to look, but this is the report. We'll start with for the new folks that haven't seen this, this is a summary sheet of the projects that were listed, the pertinent information that we have and then the total cost of the construction that we know at this time on the projects that we're tracking for the city. So the first project we'll go with is 2181. This is a project from basically 2499 in the south all the way up to Lillian Miller in the north. The project was originally awarded to MCM. Back in the day, they defaulted. And so Zachary got the contract and the current construction report from TxDOT states that we're continuing to move forward for a summer of next year completion date. All the current activity you see there primarily tells you that we've been having some minor utility conflicts that we are dealing with on a day-to-day basis. They are minor. They just happen fairly regularly and we're continuing to work on the southbound concreting of the paving of the main lanes. So if you drive the area, you should be able to see that there's quite a bit going on now that the concrete's beginning to be poured. Before our drive project is complete, we left it in one month from the last report. We wanted to put the big completed sign on it. We had our ribbon cutting back in April and we will be removing this project off of the list once staff tells me that they're ready to not see it anymore. Right now, this just tells you they're doing punch list closeout items for the contract, that the road itself is operational. Okay, your Mayhill 35 project, initially this project was going to be let in late '21, early '22, but in designing the project, we realized, I think everybody that drives this corridor realizes, that the brinker signal was minimizing the throughput of the frontage roads to Loop 288. So TechStat in the county and the city looked at that design and will be adding a bypass lane over brinker. It'll be basically a frontage road that comes up, attaches to the main lanes and then drops back down north of brinker and then the same in the reverse going southbound so that if you want to exit to go to Loop 288, you don't have to sit at the light at brinker. If you don't want to, you can go up and over. So that added five more parcels that we needed to acquire. They were environmentally cleared back in 2012, so there wasn't an environmental clearance issue. It was just that we weren't intending on acquiring those initially and now we are and that pushed our right of way date to January of next year, which then again pushes the utilities and that's the reason for the push in the date. The difference between the ready to let date of January 23 and June 25 is just a procedural process. We're putting June 25 because if you look up on the TxDOT system, you'll find that it says June 25 and they just put it there because it's outside the four-year window for funding and these funds are more than what they had in the first four years. The good news is that RTC, when they met last week, they approved the difference between the $62 million that we currently had on the project and funded the $77.6 million that's needed to complete the work. So again, after our next report, we'll show you that the Category 2 dollars match the construction cost. So here you see in the report, those are all the utilities we're working with in that corridor to get this utility clearance date of January 23. So this is the Dallas Drive Interim. We're keeping it on the report until TxDOT figures that if you drive through their northbound exiting to go to Dallas Drive, the bollards, the plastic bollards that preclude people from crossing from the frontage road to go northbound on the frontage road are installed but they have a yield sign that's protected by some construction barrels and the city's asked TxDOT to figure out what they're going to do with those construction barrels so that they don't have it look like a permanent construction project. So we're still working on how to keep that sign there without people not seeing it. So that's why it's still up. Essentially, what we wanted to accomplish has been accomplished but we just haven't gotten rid of those barrels yet. Okay, so this is the big project, 35E, 35W Merge, all the way up to US 77. We have completed the right-of-way on this project and we are now moving into full utility relocation coordination. There are significant utilities in this corridor including City of Denton, actual utilities and the DME's, electrical lines that we're meeting I'd say every two to three weeks. City staff is with TxDOT to try to figure out how to coexist in that environment once we start to widen the road and that essentially is what you'll see in the wording there. We're still on track for the June 22 so far and the funding was increased to match the estimated construction costs and we'll reflect that in the next report at the last RTC meeting, all of them were. Good news here, this is the other trauma project. We're only showing you half of the drawing because it would take up multiple pages but we are making improvements to 35 north of the merge, south of 380 where all that congestion is on the main lanes and frontage road. We're basically flipping the ramps, adding an auxiliary lane on the main lanes, adding an auxiliary lane on the frontage roads and making some improvements at the intersection of the frontage roads and 380 such that it'll allow dual lefts going westbound to through in an extended right turn lane going eastbound and we anticipate that project to start in July next month. It'll be a maintenance contract and we expect to be done by December, January, December of this year or January of the next year. So about six months. January 22, just noting it. My parents live out there so I drive it all the time. Okay, 35 north is the big project north of here from 77 all the way to the county line. It's about 800 million dollars. Again, the difference between the 600 and 800 has been met at the last RTC meeting and we'll reflect that in the next report. But again, we have a ready let of March 23 and a December 24 let date and that's an actual let date because some of the dollars that we have on this project aren't available until that fiscal year. Okay, so 35 main lanes. The main thing we want to point out here on this project is that the schematic essentially for the main lanes have been approved, which is good. That means we can move on to the finalizing the environmental document, which is probably going to be next month. And that's just for the main lane portion. And I'll go to the next one and show you that the next project that we're doing that we're focusing on more are the frontage roads and HNTB has been contracted to do the plan specifications and estimates. That's what PSNE stands for. And they basically had to suspend their work until September 1st because Austin ran out of develop authority funding. And so they have to wait till a new fiscal year to give them notice to proceed. But come September 1 HNTB will begin the design work. We're focusing on a portion of 35W frontage roads from 407 North on both sections. And I don't know if I've ever pointed out the logic on why we're doing the frontage roads first and not the main lanes. And the logic is the frontage roads are going to be where the frontage roads are always going to be once it's ultimately built. They'll be in the same location. And it allows development to occur along the interstate because you have frontage roads. And the reason we're not pursuing the main lanes right now is because when we cleared the main lanes, as we went through the clearance of it, it was initially planned to be a what we called a 3223 configuration, which is three general purpose lanes going northbound with two toll manage lanes, two toll manage lanes going south, and three general purpose. Currently what you have out there are four general purpose lanes, two in each direction. And that 3223 configuration matches what is coming up from the south out of Tarrant County. But we weren't cleared for a managed lane facility and the paradigm shifted on tolls versus non tolls. People not understand the difference between a managed lane or toll road. So we just converted the project to a rural freeway. And if rural freeway has a 500 or so foot footprint, and we're doing that because we feel that the paradigm will shift before we actually get to build the main lanes and we'll convert it back to a toll manage lanes. And the footprint for a rural freeway is the same as a footprint for a 3223 toll manage lane. I don't know if I've ever explained that. And if anybody needs help because I'm not very clear, I can help them with pictures, some other point. Sure. It sounds like to me what you just said is that the justification for it, thank you, the justification that we'll see is all of this extra wide space between those lanes. So what you normally see in a rural freeway, like what you see out there now with the four lanes, that's a rural freeway. So what you have is you have two lanes. If you had frontage road, you'd have the frontage roads and a wide parkway between the frontage roads and the main lanes, and then a wide parkway between the main lanes, which is what you have now for the main lanes. And there's all the drainage is trench flow on an urban facility. All of that goes into storm sewers. And you don't need as much room for the for the lanes and the drainage so you can put more lanes in that same footprint. It just kind of reminds me of what happened on 35 E down there in Louisville where we sat for years and years watching all that open wide space wondering what was going to happen with that. Well, so now that's the net what you see there now is an interim project to we're waiting for the permanent. And if you unfortunately, starting next year, if you're driving into Dallas, from the county line south, they're going to be doing the ultimate and that's 4224 toll manage lanes. And so we just finished the interim and now we're going to go back and break it for the ultimate, but not in didn't county yet. Did my thing go away? I think I know how to do that. I think. Right. Oh, right there it is share. See, I'm not totally helpless. I get other skills. Alright, so that's the 35 W main lanes versus the frontage roads. And that's why you got two separate projects. Because the frontage roads will always be where they're going to be in either case. Alright, US 380 77 project. This is a segment that's under construction. And the news on this, I don't know if it made the report because it just happened. But last week, the county requested that text dot consider a work zone speeds reduction in this corridor and we've been concerned about it. But after the accident, they're near 377 North, the county asked text dot because it's not their policy anymore to reduce the speed limit as a work speed. You can go to those work zones. Their their argument is they design the road to be able to be under construction at its current speed. That may be true, but the optics are pretty bad. And so we asked them to reconsider their policy and they have reconsidered it. And so they're doing the work right now to get the commission approval to do work zone speed limit of I think 50 miles an hour from loop 288 all the way to the county line because the next project is fixing to start. And it'll be it'll have to be approved by each of the communities, right? So if the city of Denton, Crossroads, Little Elm and Frisco don't agree with the speed study, I mean, the speed reduction during construction, then they can have their say at that point. But we're, we're asking the state to at least allow the cities to consider it. But we're still moving on with the November 23 completion date. And other than the speed reduction, there are minor issues that we're dealing with, but they're they're only minor. And so we're we're going pretty good on that project. Now the big project further east, this is the one where we're adding five grade separations at Navo, Teal, Legacy, 423 and 720. And an additional general purpose lane in each direction. We currently are showing a let date of Asterik because we had some issues with Upper Trinity that impacted co-serve and co-serve and then impacted AT&T, Grande, Verizon, Suddenlink and the Dominote. But we were thinking that it would be next year that we would let the project, but I'm hearing that the district is intending to let this project in August of this year because they've got some assurances from the utility providers that they'll be able to be out of the way in time. So we'll get you an update when we know it for sure. But the good news on this section of 380 is we may be letting it sooner than we originally anticipated. And all that there you see is all the utilities we're dealing with. Okay, so we're building $140 million worth of improvements to 380, but we also got to figure out what we're going to do with 380 in the future. So TechStat did a 380 feasibility study that essentially had a multiple alignments, many of which caused anguish and trauma for city staff because they all came into your thoroughfare plan and they were just lines on a map. So the feasibility study will be closed out at the end of the year and the study is recommending that the alignment stay on 380, the new future alignment, and that it be a freeway. So we'll be able to close this feasibility study out I guess soon, for lack of a better word. It may be December, it may be October, depending upon TechStat's schedule. And then we'll be able to put it to bed. All right, Loop 288 West, we have finalized our negotiations with Cheney Patel. So in about two weeks, we'll have that contract. It's a little over $5 million to do the plan specifications and estimates for the loop. And that will then update our schedule accordingly. And we are still looking, we've submitted this project for Clear Lanes funding. In Clear Lanes funding, our funding is a category, in Category 12, the commission selects for those projects that help reduce congestion on the interstates. And a bypass route such as the Loop is eligible for Clear Lanes funding. So once we get the PSNE started, we will start to submit the money we need for the Loop 288 construction. 1515, again, same there. We've gotten our agreement with LTRA. The only thing that we're working on now is we're coordinating with Peterbilt and TechStat and city staff regarding a change in the schematic to minimize the impact to the Peterbilt facility. And they've come up with some design ideas. We're going to be meeting with those folks at TechStat soon, but it shouldn't do much to the schedule. And again, we've entered into a contract with LTRA to do the plan specifications and estimates for this project. The county has. My apologies. FM 1173, the project is anticipated to be environmentally cleared in July. There are 63 parcels. Ultimately, they'll have to be acquired. Once it's environmentally cleared, the city, the county, and the state will get together to determine whether or not they want to proceed with the right of acquisition now or wait until we know more what's going to happen on the 35 project that's being funded and built in the next couple of years. And then there's your glossary of terms and acronyms that I use. If I've said anything you don't understand, I apologize. So I'm going to stop sharing. Is that what I need to do? Yeah, thanks. All right. We've got some questions along the way. Other questions, Councilmember McQuire? I have so many questions. Maybe I'll have less questions as I start to understand more. But perhaps I will not. So Teasley, I'm definitely really plugged into that one. That is my area. I live like feet from where concrete is being poured there. So you mentioned that there are some utility conflicts that are kind of maybe causing some minor delays. Can you speak to that a little bit more? And is there anything that the City can do to help move that along? Yes, ma'am. The minor delays that we're talking about are where you have a franchise utility or such as mostly franchise where they said they were on plans and where they were in the ground weren't the same. And so the contractor was relying on the plans and found the utility in the ground in a different location. And so which just stops them for a short period for them to have to come in and repatch and reroute the utility. But those are hourly impacts. They're minor. Days impacts, weeks impacts. Those are the ones we concern ourselves with. All right. Thank you. That clear set up for me. I have had a hard time finding this information and now that you're in front of me I'm going to ask, are there plans for sidewalks or protected bike paths along Teasley? So federal requirements require all federally funded assisted projects to have five foot minimum five foot sidewalks in both directions on all roadways. Historically up until about a year ago, they also required the outside lane to be 14 feet. And that was a hard and fast requirement that the feds required. Now they're allowing you to have some flexibility on that 14 foot outside lane. And the argument that the roadway guys make is that from what they see from the bicycling community, they don't ride on the outside part of the lane. If they're knowing what they're doing and they're on a roadway, they're in the middle of the lane. And so if they have to share the road, they're going to share a 14 foot road by being at the middle line of seven feet. And if it's a 12 foot, they're going to be at six feet because that's where they ride. So the argument wasn't against accommodations. It was that the one size fit all criteria wasn't working. So but the state, the feds do I'm sorry, go ahead. Oh, I'm sorry. So just to be clear, how wide will the outside lane be on Teasley? So this one was part of the projects that were mandated before the flexibility came in. So the outside line on 2181 is 14 feet. Okay, does that give y'all enough room to do like a bollard protected lane? Or or no? Are we just counting on bicyclists sharing that lane? So I just want to be clear on one thing, I actually worked for you. This I just happened to be exposed to the state enough to where I make it sound like I'm part of their team, but I'm not. So you sound like you're part of our team when you talk to them, right? Yes, too. So the state doesn't have the same philosophy about bicycle lanes as say most of the communities do. So you'd you'd the only time you'd see an actual protected bicycle lane on a facility like Teasley or 2181 is if it was taken off system and then maintained by the city and then they could do with it what they want. But as a state facility, they don't do that. Okay, thank you that that clears that up for me. Do you know what the speed limit is going to be on Teasley? Like, sorry, make sure I'm looking at the right area. So like from Southridge or from Lillian Miller, so I can I can save a little bit of time on that. Your city has the authority to set the speed limit on these state facilities by ordinance. Now they got to follow what's called the 85th percentile rule, which means that you open the road to traffic, it's unimpeded by congestion or construction, and then you do a speed study where you hide in the bushes and you take radar and see what people are actually doing when nobody's looking. And then they take the 85 the 15% fastest people and throw them out considering their reckless drivers. And so whatever that 85th percentile is, that the speed set that then you can set that speed limit on that road seven miles plus or minus what the speed study calls for rounded to the next five or zero digit. It makes sense if you do it in math, but so let's say the speed study says that it needs to be 55 miles an hour. And you don't want it to be 55. You could reduce it by seven and then round it down. So you could have it go to 45 in that case. Or if you wanted it to go up, you could go, you know, 65 because it'd be the seven plus rounded up. So you just got to do the study but mostly the city of Denton sets the speed limits on the state facilities. For example, 2499 it would be as it's a sister project and it's I think the city's got that speed limit at 45 miles an hour. And the speed setting came in at 55. I will I will look more closely at that 85th percentile rule another time. Okay, my next question is just sort of a general question about sidewalks along I-35 frontage roads. I know that there are some areas that do have sidewalks, not very many. Who builds those sidewalks? Who owns those sidewalks? How is the decision made to build a sidewalk in some areas and not in other areas? So TxDOT builds the sidewalks when they construct the road. In I-35E's case, that was an interim project so there were areas through Denton in particular because of the right-of-way constraints where the frontage roads weren't impacted by the improvements to add capacity to the main lanes and so those frontage roads weren't upgraded. But if you look across like Lake Louisville where we go across the lake, we put sidewalks there, well actually it's a walking path, it's a 10-foot path on both directions because we were impacting both of those sections of the freeway and frontage roads. So anywhere where we impact the frontage roads, we being whoever's wanting the project, the state comes in and adds sidewalks in both directions. So the reason you don't have some in areas is because those sections of road haven't been upgraded. Okay, so in general going forward when TxDOT sort of redos the frontage road, we should expect that there will be sidewalks to add to the frontage roads within the city. That one project that I was showing you on the report from Mayhill up through Brinker to 288, we are impacting the frontage roads on both sides. So that schematic shows pedestrian accommodations. Excellent. I'm really glad to hear that. Okay, another question. So the project for like the 35 east-west merge going north, I know I've seen some pretty extensive plans for a new underpass for Windsor, that's underpass, correct? Correct. Okay. I believe it's going underpass. Can you speak to... I'm sorry, I think it's going over. Okay, so Windsor will go over 35. I think that's the case, yes ma'am. Okay, okay. Can you speak to what other under or overpasses are going to be either rebuilt or added as part of that project? So everything from the merge, everything from the merge all the way to the county line is ultimate construction. So I can't tell you off the top of my head, but everything that is there now will be upgraded. And typically we try to keep the stack for lack of a better word as it was before, but in some cases we flip the stack because the old paradigm was you make the minor road go over the major road. The new paradigm is the major roads going from Mexico to Canada. So it has a longer time to run out its grade, right? And so you allow development to occur at the corners by taking the interstate up as opposed to the cross street. So I can get that information for you. I'm certain the staff has the schematic that was approved for these, but I don't remember off the top of my head. Okay, yeah, I'd be fine to take that in an email, just to see where those underpasses overpasses are going to be located. So just one more on that. So for example, your thoroughfare plan shows the outer loop tying in to 35 roughly around Milam Road. So what we're doing at Milam Road on the new project is we're building what's called the box for the direct connects. And so what the box is, is if I don't know if you go south into like Louisville where you get to 121 Sam Rayburn, and you let's say you want to go to the airport, but before you go to the airport you want to stop at Steak and Shake and get a drink. To get to Steak and Shake you exit, you run the frontage road, hit the signal and turn on on to Sam Rayburn to exit to get to Steak and Shake. That's the box. If you just want to go to the airport, you get up on the direct connects and you never stop, you continue to move. So what we're building in the 35 project for the outer loop where the city's thoroughfare plan shows it to be on their plan is near Milam and they're building that box as part of the project. So all those great separations all along through your city limits should be consistent with your thoroughfare plan. Yeah, thank you so much. Okay, I also had some questions about the I-35 West. You were talking about, you know, changes to what the plan was going to be and I just want to make sure I'm clear about what those changes are going to be. So will there be storm sewers or will there be like ditches? So the frontage roads will have the outside part of the frontage roads will have storm sewers. The inside part of the frontage roads because we're not touching the main lanes yet will have open ditch similar to what you see out there now between the two main lanes. But ultimately when we come in with the main lanes, everything will be in system. It'll be in a storm system underneath the frontage roads or the main lanes or in between. But it'll instead of shrinking the footprint because the reason you have an urban design is when you come through an urban area typically you need a smaller footprint. And so you house the the water, those are the storm sewers underneath the frontage roads so that you don't take as much right away. But at where we're at now, the right away is there. There's no development. And so we're going to take that rural cross section and convert it to an urban by adding essentially four more lanes. Okay, yes. That I understand now. Thank you. So you you did say in part of your explanation earlier about the I-35 West frontage roads and main lanes that like there would be frontage road lanes and then a parkway and then and then the main lanes. Can you just define the term parkway for me in this context? It's grass. Okay. Okay. Okay. And so just to be clear, you said there are not going to be toll lanes on this part of the 35 West project. Will there be non-tolled express lanes that are separated from the main lanes? So I'm going to be clear on this. What we're doing now is focusing primarily on the frontage roads. And we are moving forward with the environmental clearance of the main lanes. And the reason we're doing that is because we have to justify being able to acquire all of the right away, both the main lanes and the frontage roads by being environmentally clear. But there's no intent by the region at this point, or TXDOT, to build the main lanes as general purpose lanes only. They're going to they're going to build when they build a general purpose lanes, they'll do it after the paradigm shift and we can add our toll managed lanes. And there's no benefit to a non-tolled managed lane. And I'll give you the perfect example of where the only non-tolled managed facility I know of in the state of Texas is and that's the elevated section of 35 through Austin. And if you've been down there, you know that those lanes don't work any better than the ones under them. So the region and so that brings me to a point I probably need to explain. There is a group called the North Central Texas Council of Governments, and they are basically both a federal authority entity and a state authority entity that represents also local governments. So they're basically a regional entity that has both federal and state authority. When it comes to transportation projects in a metropolitan area boundary, which is basically eight counties within the Dallas-Fort Worth area, your MPO, the Metropolitan Planning Organization, which in this case in North Texas is the Regional Transportation Council, they set the priorities on what can and can't be done inside that metropolitan area boundary. So the fact that Tex.Austin right now doesn't want to do any tolled managed lanes means that they can't build anything in the region that the RTC doesn't agree with. And so we're not the region has said they are not building any more freeways that don't have tolled managed lanes on them because they're a congestion tool. And so they're simply moving forward with the frontage roads. Okay, yes. Thank you. I think I understand now. Okay, the next thing I just wanted to kind of express my support for the county's request for a work zone speed limit on 380. I would also like to see that. Okay, so I wanted to ask about there was something in the 380 discussion that I did not quite understand. So you said that Tex.DOT is providing an advanced funding agreement to the city of Denton for a 10-foot sidewalk component on the funding agreement has a fixed cost of $95,000 to be transferred to Tex.DOT. Can you just explain what that is? So your staff, y'all had a bike czar back in the day, or I don't know if that's what you call them, but that's what I called her. She met with cog when we were designing 380 and essentially got the council of governments to agree to pay 80 cents on the dollar for a 10-foot path out to the green belt, I think is where it ends. And so what those notes are referencing is that agreement and that's part of the project that's currently under construction. And then the city went and asked, so I think your local match was like $95,000. And then your city staff asked the current county commissioner at the time to participate. And he put, I think, $50,000 in that account. And so that's the 95, the city's portion was 45, the money was transferred, and the project is being built that includes your 10-foot shared path. Thank you. I just wasn't quite clear on all of the lingo, but I understand now. Yeah, I think that was all my questions. That was all my questions. Thank you so much. Sorry to eat up all of your time. That's all you had? Come on. All right. Councilmember Byrd, questions? Additional questions? I appreciate all of those questions because I have my little check marks off and the things in my head that I wanted to ask about, so I appreciate you, Councilwoman, for getting that information for me. I had a question about the 288 West. Let me ask you about 288 as it is now. It appears as though it's under some construction work. I haven't driven around there here in the last couple of weeks or so. 288 up going north, Kings Row area. I think that might just be maintenance. Just regular maintenance on that? Because right now, the reason you see 288 work well from basically 380 on around to 35 is because the city had made a deal years ago to protect that corridor as an actual bypass. And so the city of Denton protects that road by precluding development to be able to attach directly to the lanes on 288 so you don't have another Golden Triangle issue. What we're proposing to do going forward on that segment is if you saw in that feasibility study, 380 feasibility study, you saw that the green line, 380 hit 288, and there was a brown line. That brown line means the Metropolitan Planning Organization, the RTC, has said that they believe that it's now time to actually put frontage roads on 288 northeast so that you don't have to protect it by ordinance. It'll be protected by design. So that's what we're planning to do there so that you'll be able to, if you want to get to Denton, you'll take the outer loop, you drop down 423, you come in, you go to town. If you come in 380 and you want to go north, you'll be able to take the 288 and go north and allow the city to preclude more forcefully all the truck traffic that currently comes down through town on 380 business. Okay. So then the new section there starting from 35 and going west, is that going to look like what we're seeing right now? No, it will be, I apologize. It'll be a controlled access facility. And what a controlled access facility means, you'll have main lanes and frontage roads. So if you're driving on loop 288 west and you exit 35 and you want to go all the way down to 24 or 49, you'll be able to drive nonstop because all of the main lanes, so where it crosses the railroad track, there'll be a grade separation. Where it crosses 380, it'll be grade separated. So all of the approach streets will have to tie into a frontage road, go to the next crossing to come back if they want to come back. So you'll have a free flow movement of traffic on the main lanes and access to the frontage road for your commercial development to the inside, whatever's going to happen on the outside, will come and develop to the frontage roads. Okay. So it'll be a freeway looking project. It'll look like a freeway? Yes, ma'am. As opposed to what 288 looks like right now, it doesn't really look like a freeway. So loop 288 from 35 to 380 is an arterial, and so the difference between an arterial and a freeway are controlled access facilities. An arterial provides more access and less mobility because it's the only thing a road can do is access and mobility. 288 northern part is more mobility because there's nothing to access because you control it by permit. Access will be controlled on the main lanes. You'll have mobility on the frontage. You'll have access. Okay. It's both. Okay. It's going to look a little different. I wanted to ask about the -- can you answer the question about the brinker area because right now it's just pretty much terrible. Terrible. To get off of. It looks like you just want to kind of roll over to the -- in the little pond there. And you can't go to the inside because I've tried. There's a ditch about five feet deep. That's absolutely right. So I believe that you answered that question for me. Mayhill. Mayhill. Do you have anything -- I'm trying to understand why the construction work stopped at a certain point in Mayhill. What was the delay? What was the delay for that? And how is that road going to kind of connect into 2499? That's a good question. So the City of Denton, years ago, partnered with the Metropolitan Planning Organization, in this case RTC, and the county to fund Mayhill from 380 to 35. And it was a $40 million commitment from the RTC, which required a $10 million commitment from the locals. And so City of Dent put in five, and then two county commissioners put in two and a half million apiece for the five to get the 10 for the match for the 40. They designed it and moved along. As they -- as the previous staffs moved along, they found out that the project was going to cost more than they anticipated. So at that point in time, staff decided to simply truncate the project prior to the railroad track because that was a significant cost increase and just tie it back in as it is. Future administrations come in and go, that's silly. Let's see what we can do to fix it. So they asked me to go see if we can find five million bucks laying around. So we went and made a pitch to the RTC. They said, in for a penny, in for a pound. City, if you'll pick up the $4 million it takes to buy the right-of-way, we'll put the $14 million we need for the remaining grade separation over Mayhill. But they were already constructing the first phase with Zachary, so they decided to just let that go and do this second phase as a second phase. So we're now in the process of reevaluating the cost, and we have some issues with the project that may require an additional $5 million. And your staff has already been working with the RTC, and we've gotten a verbal commitment, I think about a week and a half ago, from the MPO, that they would fund the $5 million. So we're back cooking with gas on that one. So that's why it's broken up, because of funding issues and just different thought processes. But when we're done, it will continue up and over the DCTA. It will be grade separated over the track, and then it will tie straight in to where Colorado and Mayhill are. If you're coming up Mayhill and you have to stop and go left or right, and you go, "Man, it would be nice just to go straight," you're about to be able to go straight. And then you'll curve back over, and it'll all be grade separated. And then we'll tie Edwards in further to the north so that there's no at-grade crossings at the railroad track, which was very important to both the city and the RTC. They wanted to make sure there was no at-grade crossings. So from now on, if you're coming to Edwards, you'll take a little veer north, TN, and then you'll get on to Mayhill and come up and over the track to get back to 35. So funding, I guess, is the way to basically say it. So I have a big smile on my face, and that is totally genuine right there. So I live kind of over in that area, and I use that area quite a bit, so I really appreciate that. I'll make sure I tell my husband that. Let, L-E-T. Okay, I'm sorry. So TechStat has contracts every month, and their term is they let them out to the contractors to bid on them. So they literally let the project out, and when it says the let of June of 2022, every month the state has to spend so much money every month. And so they have to do whatever they got to do. And so the way the city and the county has been successful is we've been getting our projects where you see there's a ready-to-let date, and then there's a let date. There'll be times where we're working towards a ready-to-let date where we don't have any money, but we get it ready-to-let because somewhere else somebody's project didn't get ready-to-let. They had a let date and had money. They don't get unfunded. They just get pushed out a year, but they still have to spend that money in that year, and we step in. So that's the difference between ready-to-let and then let. I was looking forward to that to be an acronym. It will be now. It will be now. Yes. Okay. All right. Thank you. And I believe that is all the questions that I have. I was just so excited. We're starting to get hot in here. Thank you. Well, I am really disappointed that my colleagues couldn't come up with any more questions. Okay. That's great. Thank you very much for that. We'll close this item and move to item E. Receive a report and hold a discussion regarding the proposed Bell Avenue pedestrian corridor for the portion of the roadway through T.W.U. from Administration Drive to just south of Chapel Drive. Good morning, committee members. I'm pleased to be here presenting. It was a great morning listening to all the topics, and you all have some fantastic questions. I hope you can hear me clear, and if not, I can't see you anymore. We've got the presentation up. So hopefully, and my hope for myself is that you've run out of questions, but I hope to answer all of them. I'm here happily today to present a new project that the city's been working on for a few years. It's called the Bell Avenue pedestrian corridor. My name is Tracy Beck, and I'm the project manager for this project. A little bit of the project history on this is that it kicked off in about 2018. There was a traffic study that was prepared for the entire T.W.U. area when T.W.U. suggested maybe closing down Bell Avenue. When they suggested the closure, we said, "Why don't we share in a traffic study?" We started collecting some data and numerous intersections, numerous roadway links spanning from the Carroll Street over to Mockingbird throughout all the areas in this, I don't know, peachy, fleshy color. We shared a traffic study with T.W.U. sharing the costs, and then the city in 2020 initiated. This is in the fall. What we are calling is a T.W.U. area program, where we started looking at the study, and it said, "We can surely close down the Bell Avenue Road. There won't be any traffic issues, but in the future, there's going to be some discussions that we'd like to talk about on some roadway capacities." We started looking at the roadways in this T.W.U. area program. In 2021, this past March, we kicked off some of the projects within that program, and I'll go over those in a minute. Unfortunately, the flood, I've got a little mosquito in here, they love me. We had it, so I'm going to probably hit and swipe. You don't see me, but if I hit the mic again, I apologize. We've got the design started in March, but then we went into a huge rainstorm that kind of delayed all of our traffic data collections. Here's the T.W.U. program overall. The completed projects are the traffic study I mentioned a moment ago, and then we're also working on a way we worked on a wastewater line. If you can see the map off to the right, Bell Avenue is going to be the green line. Then under construction right now that you may have seen driving by is the Bell Avenue water line. This spans from approximately University South to McKinney. Then under contract, which is what started in March of 2021, is the Bell Avenue pedestrian corridor that we'll focus on today, as well as some additional projects were shown in the map, which are the yellow line showing the Mingo, a southern section of Mingo, a northern section, and this is split at the Riddell intersection, an improvement at the Riddell and Mingo roadway, and improvements to Riddell. And the benefits of these corridor projects is we're working with T.W.U. closely to see about getting the right-of-way necessary. If you guys have traveled through this area, you'll know that right-of-way is very tight. We have a railroad on one side, and we have homes on the other side, and where we don't have homes, we have a T.W.U. campus. So they have been wonderful to work with lately. We've built a lot of working relationships with their staff coordinating these projects. And the final project within this group of projects that we've gone under contract is the Mingo Quiet Zone. So these are, you can see little Xs and 0s along the lines. Those are going to be the quiet zones that we're looking at. Taking away the train horns as best as we can and replacing them with the signal, the intersection horns. This does not stop the horns from honking on the train. I've been told so many times by all the railroad people, they can still honk the horns if they want to, and that's only if they see people on the tracks or some obstruction. But on the everyday uses, they're going to have those intersection horns that sound a little foggier. To me, they sound a little foghorned such. So T.W.U. projects, they have their own projects that we talk about, and we have monthly meetings. The Frame Street access, where they want to have an access here on the Star. And then we also have some drainage studies that we're looking at. And then we have future potential projects, including Oakland Street. Jumping into the point of today's discussion is the goals and purposes. We have, if you're looking at the map, I think I can describe it a little better. University on the north side. Chapel is currently an intersection. Traveling a little bit further south, there is an intersection with the dining hall. And T.W.U. would like to stop Bell Avenue at the dining hall driveway, letting people in and out of the dining hall, stopping that corridor, shutting it down to through traffic to administration. This corridor would be opened to vehicle emergency vehicle access so fire and police could get through, as well as keeping that corridor wide open for pedestrians and bicycles. The whole point of this is that the university has been reaching out to us for years saying, the students crossing back and forth for campus activities, there's no single point of access. They'll walk across as they feel. They're not going to walk up to a signal. So they'd love to have this area just cordoned off for pedestrian and bicycle access. The concerns that the city had is to keep that corridor open to serve the police and the fire. We are working closely right now with the police and fire to see what are the issues that they have. And fortunately, the fire department's main access in service area is on the south side. They don't typically go through Bell. However, when they have big events, they do want to cut through Bell to get to the north side. So we've been working closely with them as well as police to make sure that we have the emergency component of this. Closing the road is not a big deal for cars because fortunately, as we've gone through COVID, we've noticed no complaints. We've noticed no issues with traffic backing up. When the water line project went through and when the COVID has worked through, there have been minimal impacts to traffic. So that's been great and very positive. Moving through, the hurdles that we have right now that we're looking at is temporary versus permanent. Do we temporarily shut the road down or do we permanently shut it down? And then the construction funding, we're looking at funding in the fiscal year '21-'22 as a CFP request. And then we also are concerned a little bit about potential pushback from residents regarding the closure. So that's part of today's discussion too is just to open up a dialogue and not asking any permission today and what to do. We have ongoing meetings and discussions with our city staff, but to find out what the best solution would be to move forward with this closure. And here's some examples real quick is that this is the intersection looking at administration on the top and then on the bottom is a chapel. And these are unfortunately my sad little cheesy designs here with the little red sticks. Those are kind of the little bollards that we've seen before. I heard about them talked earlier where they delineate the cars from switching lanes on the highways. And you can see a little picture on the right where they flip over, they bend over if a fire truck hits it and they spring back up. So we're talking about something such as those types of bollards. There was a discussion about possibly the bollards in the middle that go up and down a little bit more sturdy, stronger and they would definitely stop a vehicle. However, the concern is they go up and down into the ground and they can also not go up and down in the ground. So if a fire truck was coming through and they do not retract and they expect them, they can do some significant damage to the fire truck. So a little costly option and also we're looking into a little bit more. Is there a way to make sure that these have retractable? Some of the discussions we'll have with staff are is that the right solution? Other solutions on the very bottom that we're discussing, and none of these are set in stone at this point. We're having a big I'm calling it a Come to Jesus meeting where we all sit down and talk about our pros and cons. A gate, similar to what you see in the apartment complexes, but we could set it up in a way that we could still allow the bicycle and pedestrians to get through the gate without having to open it. We'd have them offset, but it would be an extra discouragement to the vehicles. So again, administration, we would have the road closed off on the north side of the intersection. We're also looking at signal studies to remove the traffic signals because at this point it would operate as a three-way stop, all stop signs. And then similarly at Chapel and Bell, we're looking at removing that signal too. And we'll do the correct studies to make sure that is the appropriate move. Now this is a picture of what it's going to look like potentially, where we have the pedestrian bicycle emergency only access. Again, this is stemming from administration is on your left going to the right, which is just south of the dining hall. And what we'd implement for this turnaround is because we don't have an intersection such as administration to have folks turn to the left and right. If somebody goes rogue, and there's also a little tiny driveway you might see at the tail end, it's a little bit small here, is that we have to get access to the end, get access into the dining hall with semi-trucks loading deliveries, and then turn them around. Originally this was presented as a possible roundabout and we're not excited about the roundabout options. They have their place, but this was not a place. We looked at this more as a U-turn. So it's a teardrop is what we're calling it. The reds inside would match what the existing pavement looks like. It would be the stamped concrete so it would be pleasing to the eye as well as functional emergency vehicles as well as delivery trucks could roll over that. And then we'd also have some curb options. And if I move down, these are some simple curb options, a little bit of a blow up. And I spoke about temporarily, we can add a temporary curb such as what they call tough curb, the yellow one at the side. There's a flexible curb that's kind of a hard rubber that we can mount down and remove. And then those typically run at about the same price as a concrete curb. And the concrete curb is a standard at the top. And TW has, it's said that they do not need these parking spaces, that that is their available space to use. And we would try to salvage at least three of these, but with the new parking lot that they've built, those parking spaces would no longer be needed on Bell. And then on the south, not south side, but on the bottom side of this picture would be the dining hall entrance. So these are the designs that we have today. We're working through the material options. We're working through the police, the fire, talking to parks. We're talking to the streets department. We're talking to the traffic department, trying to get all the vetted out concerns. Because I can tell you, if you just talked to somebody in the grocery store about this, they do have an opinion about Bell. And a lot of them don't see the need for it to stay open. They're just curious. They're very curious and they love the idea of the pedestrian component. So the next activities that we're doing, continue stakeholder engagement. We have a meeting tomorrow with some TWQ staff. A meeting Friday with more of all hands on board with the city staff. We are working on completing the designs. And then we will proceed with construction. We need some funding. We're working through those hurdles as well. But at this point, I'm going to open up for questions. And I think I stopped sharing. Oh, it stopped sharing for you. I love it when it happens. It's like our new DENT development services, all the doors and lights open by themselves. Yeah. Shocker. I have a few questions. Can I get a closer look at you showed kind of a map, but it was like at a crazy angle of what's what the future plans are for the area around like Riddell and Mingo and Willis and Lattimore. So North Riddell. So it's Riddell is going to connect across Mingo. And that's going to be aligned. Was I seeing that correctly? Correct. The Riddell intersection is looking to move. As Tracy is pulling up her screen, Councilmember Maguire, this is Rachel, just wanted to make a few notes there. So as Tracy mentioned in her presentation, there is an overall TWU area program that we're currently working on taking several of those projects, some of which were part of the 2014 bond program to 30% design. And then in the future, hopefully later this summer or early fall, we'll be presenting those to full city council to get feedback from a prioritization perspective on which projects we should be pursuing first so that then we can identify the necessary gap funding. Unfortunately, because of the age of some of these projects, of course, there have been significant cost escalations just in the cost of construction, right of way acquisition. So we want to get some feedback from you on of those projects, which should we be focusing on first to get those completed? Tracy's moving forward with the quiet zones. As she mentioned, the Bell Avenue corridor was requested as Tracy mentioned from TWU, just from a pedestrian safety perspective due to students crossing across Bell. So that is why we have moved forward with that more quickly. We actually met with Chancellor Phaeton and several of her leadership staff on May 27th to discuss this. And the sentiment or the request from TWU, particular to Bell Avenue's closure is because there have been those closures already as a result of the water line project. And as Tracy mentioned, yes, we have gotten some feedback. And of course, we've gotten some positive and negative feedback from residents regarding that closure. There already have been adjustments to people's traffic patterns. They've gotten used to not using Bell over the past few months. And so the ask of TWU is, is there any way that we could expedite the potential closure? And this truly what Tracy presented, at least as currently concepted, would be an interim solution to close Bell Avenue. So it would be a pilot that if we wanted to make additional investment, you know, Tracy mentioned those collapsible ballers. Maybe we start with the plastic option and then move to something more permanent. That is something we could do. So we're still in the design, early design phases, but the waterline project that utilities currently has is set to complete at the end of this calendar year. So the request of TWU is, is there a way for us to potentially keep Bell Avenue closed, have that true pilot project in place? But then from a larger perspective, and I think Tracy may be ready to pull up the screen now, we have that overarching TWU area program where Tracy is serving as the project manager, meeting on a monthly basis with TWU. And as I mentioned, the thought process is either later this summer or early fall, we'll be coming back to you with an overview with those 30% design schematics of all of the projects that Tracy mentioned, and getting some feedback from the city council on what we should be prioritizing in our capital investment plan. Thank you, Rachel, very much. And I'm hoping that I'm sharing screen. Very good. Fantastic. So this is the area. It is a skewed because it's a kind of a fun graphic for colors just kind of get the whole area on the square. But I believe if I understood you, you're asking about the Riddell and the mingo intersection, which is this area, is that correct? Yes. Okay. This intersection currently today exists as a T intersection, Riddell comes in and intersects, and then you have to turn left or right at mingo. And then similarly, there's an intersection that's through this, the city didn't service center. We're looking at closing that driveway, you can see the X here, and then realigning the Riddell alignment to take the existing alignment through this orange corridor, and then tying into a four legged intersection. The reason for that is when you go through quiet zones with the railroads, they typically ask that you close one or more intersections. We're looking at the closure of pertain as well as, I want to call it Willis, it's not Willis, it's Texas. Willis. Willis is the street that connects to Riddell and intersects mingo. Correct. So what we'll do is we'll realign this and we'll add it, the proposal at this point, as Rachel pointed out, all of these plans are at a 30% level. We would propose this as a full blown intersection with all the lanes needed at the intersection. I don't know if you've driven an intersection where you say, wow, great new road, but they forgot to blow the intersection out at the crossing, and then you drive fast, quickly, and then you get to a little two lane, at two lane intersection road. So what we wanted to do is propose starting at this particular intersection, getting all the infrastructure in place, and then as well as doing that, looking at possible pedestrian corridors, looking at the sidewalks, the projects, and let me clarify real quick, we don't have a lot to share with you right now on designs because we did just start in March and the rain has set us back. Our consultants have been actively and specifically on the Riddell and mingo, they're aggressively working on the designs, collecting the data to show where the existing right of way is. We didn't even know where that was until just recently. And then looking at how many lanes can we fit in the existing, how many lanes do we need permanently, and then what types of sidewalks can we get into this area. So we'll come back to this committee and share more information as we have the details. Today was just kind of giving you a precursor, we're looking at it, and we'd love to have any input since we are early in the stages, and then work with that feedback. So this would be a line for a four legged intersection, and we would be removing two existing crossings. Okay. So just to clarify, because I've had a constituent ask me about this. Yeah, there we go. Sorry. Yeah, we need to be on screen when we talk. Okay. Yeah, so just to clarify, because I've had a constituent ask me about this, are there any plans related to extending or connecting Lattimore or Texas Street? That is not part of the current TWU program and we might have future phases, but we haven't discussed those yet. Okay, thank you. So one other question. I'm interested in the U-turn idea that you showed us south of Chapel. Would there be any kind of similar construction south of administration to sort of alert people to the fact that they can't get through Bell and they need to take another route, or would there be anything at Schmitz Avenue or Texas Street or Withers or Mingo that would alert drivers to the fact that they can't get through Bell and they need to take another route? Sure. Part of the design scope for our consultant is to take a look at the traffic patterns. When you shut a road down, of course, everyone's going to find a new route. Unfortunately, the new route going towards the west would go through administration, through campus. It's a private road and if you're familiar with the area, they have an overhead pedestrian bridge and they're concerned about large vehicles. So when this was proposed, nobody gave a lot of thought about getting any types of big trucks backwards. Small cars can travel through the roads with no issues and they can go through the campus and find alternate routes, but it's larger vehicles. So that's going to be one of the components that we're going to be working with everybody is the traffic controls, signing, giving warnings, giving people opportunities. There might be future U-turns that we can do, future roundabouts if that's the tool decided that's right. But right now, the teardrop was not proposed because it is an intersection that we would dead end and we're open to ideas at this point. Everything costs money, so we're trying to work within a budget as well as implementing as quick as possible because one of the ideas that we'd like to do is if we do closes for the students and having them coming back in the fall, reopening it when the water project is complete to turn around and close it would be awkward. It would be a little bit confusing. So we're looking at ideas as well as maybe temporary gates. What can we do temporarily to close it and still offer the safety benefits and then come back with a retrofitted permanent solution just so that we can tag along to that water line. Okay, thank you. Yeah, that answers all my questions. I'll entertain questions, but only from a TWU alumna. Hire an ear woman, hire an ear woman in the house. Is it the owls? Do you do like Hoot Hoot or something like the gigons? That is very new, so that's beyond. Is it? Okay, because I didn't realize they were owls. I didn't either. I had no idea we were owls. I knew pioneer. Hire an ear woman. Yeah, I like pioneer. You know, I'm hiring ears. Yeah, I, as you were talking about that overpass down there on Administration Drive. By the way, I worked at TWU for 23 years, so I'm very familiar with that area and lived there on campus as well. That overpass, I think that's just only about 14 feet high. I mean, it is very low and it's been hit several times and there's a lot of warning heading up to it, but people still kind of ignore it. I was thinking, oh, so the other question, the question that I initially had was when this area closes, is there going to be some type of, is it going to be, like the road is going to be bricked or just some really significant way to show that the areas are still connected to each other or is it going to stay the same and just close? That's one question. The other question is about Oakland Street. Did I hear you mention something about Oakland Street? You did. And there's not anything that's going to be going on there yet? Nothing in this phase of the project or the TWU program, that was on our sites, on our target board. And when it came to funding as well as the consultants, we were trying to expedite as quick as possible. And there's so much to be done to Oakland Street that we thought, you know what, that's going to take a little bit of a bigger stab at beyond 30%. We wanted to make sure that we put a lot of time and focus on that because it's drainage, utilities, it's road, it's parking, you name it. So we do have that on our sites. We have a monthly meeting with TWU and at those meetings, we have a parking lot of projects that we talk about and we say, don't forget about these. And every time we meet, we remind ourselves where are we at and we have upcoming plans for drainage. But right now we don't have anything consulted yet, if that makes sense. The other thing is closing, I see that you're closing the north part of that, that Bell, is there any future plans to just close it all the way through? Because I remember someone getting hit there in front of the MCL building and there's just no thought to look left and right hardly anymore. People are just walking out and there's just a little bitty concrete to go from one side of the street over to the MCL building. Is there any future plans? Not at this point and what we're doing is partnering with the TWU's master plan, which did not include that closure. It was just this, this is how they envisioned their pedestrians, their area. And we also have, part of this is also finessing the closure to look at where the fire access is. There's actually beyond just the fire truck getting to the points is they have hookups to get to the building if that truck, that truck needs to get somewhere. So with the north end, there's actually driveways that if we severed it, we wouldn't have any access to the dining hall for vehicles, we wouldn't have access to the chancellor's house and she might, she might take exception to that. So I think that that's part of the plan is that this was the section where we would have the least impact to driveways, buildings and allow the students to have a point of safe crossing. And ideally it'll shorten, with less traffic traveling through, if someone crosses the northern section, there should be less traffic at that point because people are not cutting all the way through to McKinney or back from McKinney. And that's part of the strategy we have with it being a pilot project. We'll of course have signage and make sure that it's very clear that it's not a through street, even for the duration of the pilot. But as we're looking at traffic patterns that are adjusted as a result of the closure, we can certainly make adjustments based on feedback we get from TWAU, the traffic counts that we're seeing as well. And then to answer your question about the improvements that would be made, I think you were asking about essentially the pedestrian mall that would be created. That is a part of the TWAU master plan, something that we're coordinating with TWAU staff on. We do need to get our Parks and Recreation Department involved as well. But my understanding, and this is very preliminary conversations, is TWAU does have some plans to have some enhanced landscaping, some pavers to really accentuate this as a feature on campus. And so that's something because it is city right of way, we would need to work with TWAU on an agreement just in terms of who's responsible for maintenance, who's responsible for the ultimate design. But all things that we're planning on working through, we have started those preliminary conversations already. I'm going to say this. I had heard even way back when in I would say even the early 90s that this was something that was kind of on the horizon. And even as an employee then, I was envisioning them shutting down the entire street and rerouting everything over to Rue Del. That was the big talk way in the back. So it's just really interesting to see that finally 20 something years later that it's now coming into fruition as to what that long term vision was. Thank you. Those are all the questions that I have today. Super. We will be bringing back more as needed. So this is just a taste of what we're bringing to you and we'll have more details and more input from the other groups to share. Okay. I'd like to add a few comments. First of all, I think TWAU is a great partner in the City of Denton. I think it's a fantastic institution. Not only as the alma mater of one of our distinguished council members, but what they do for particularly women and social mobility, just a great presence. I love TWAU. I love my relatives too. I wouldn't give them a street. I'm only one. I don't know if you'll ever need my vote for this, but at this moment, it's very clear to me what it would do for TWAU. Not clear at all to me what it would do for the City of Denton. I'm highly skeptical of the claims that in any kind of similar numbers that there are comments in favor versus opposed. I think people have found it to be just my perception. I don't have any data, but my perception is people have found it to be a pain in the neck to have bell closed. So I think it's a meaningful traffic. Now, it's not impossible for me to imagine a conversation where something that I would view as a huge give up. We don't have a whole lot more than streets we can give up. Nobody gets a street, but it's not impossible for me to imagine a conversation where there was something so clearly of lasting and significant benefit to the City of Denton that was part of our partnership beyond kind of what we already have, where I could confidently say every day as people are annoyed that bell is closed, they can go, "Well, that's what we had to do in order to get X." Now, whatever the X is, is off posting. But that's my frame of mind. I hate to be the skunk at the party, but that's what I think. In future presentations, Mayor Pro Tem Meltzer, what we can do is bring back the results of the traffic study. And I will note, again, it's off posting, so I'll just note that we are having conversations. We did mention several of the projects that are part of that holistic TWU area program, and Tracy's managing all of those projects. There will be some asks of TWU, particularly for right-of-way, that's necessary. And so I do want to note that there will be some financial requests that will be made of TWU as we look at the implementation of the overall TWU area program. Okay. I appreciate that. Thank you. Anything else on this topic? Anyone? All right, then. Thank you for the presentation. We'll close item E and open up item F, staff reports. First, we've got item one, staff memorandum update regarding senior planner, bicycle, pedestrian, and ADA coordinator position. Yes. And Council Member, I'm sorry, Mayor Pro Tem Meltzer, in the interest of time, I'm not going to pull up the memo, but I do have great news. So I believe at the last Mobility Committee meeting, our city engineer, Rebecca Devaney, mentioned that the candidate that was our top candidate was coming in with his wife to look at schools, look at houses and spend the weekend in Denton. Since that time, we are delighted to announce that he has accepted the position and will be starting in July. Unfortunately, because he is not yet on the city's payroll, I have been advised not to share his name. However, I believe our next Mobility Committee meeting is on July 21st. And I am fairly certain, almost 100% certain, that he will be on the city's payroll at that time. And we will gladly have an agenda item or part of our staff update where we will introduce him, share his contact information at that time, because at that point, he will be on the city's payroll. But we are very excited. I know he's actually listening right now. I've been emailing with him. So he's actually listening to today's Mobility Committee meeting. And I know he's already been listening to council meetings. I know he heard some of the comments that were made at yesterday's city council meeting as well. So we are excited to have him start, which should be in mid-July. And as soon as he starts, we will share his credentials, have a big Friday report right up. And then, as I've already mentioned, he will be introduced at a Mobility Committee meeting as well as Traffic Safety Commission, Committee on Persons with Disabilities. I know he is going to be a very popular and very busy man once he starts in his role. And I know John Polster mentioned the title earlier. He is not going to be called the bike czar. He's actually, his title is Senior Planner, Bicycle, Pedestrian, ADA Coordinator. So kind of a mouthful. You may hear several people refer to him as the bike peg coordinator. I believe that was the title that Julie Andrews had and then Mark Oliphant as well. The position has been a little bit expanded past that to include the ADA components. But we are so excited to have him starting in mid-July. He's moving across the country. So that's the reason for the bit of a lag that we have in terms of him starting. And apparently coming by bike. So that's great. Congratulations. Yeah, I'm glad that he was hearing the comments. I was going to ask, related to those comments, if part of his remit will be seeing that we're thoroughly implementing the already approved 2012 bike plan in our projects. I'm sorry. Was there a question in that or was that a comment? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, will part of his remit be ensuring in alignment with the questions that were asked last night, ensuring that we adhere to and implement the approved 2012 bike plan? It was sort of alleged that and I don't know, you know, fairly or not, but I kind of trust the particular speakers we had, it was alleged that we've just not done stuff that was already approved, which is concerning. Yes. So he will be an embedded member of several of our capital project teams. And I think that's where we really have the benefit of the synergy of him being a part of the capital projects and engineering department. But yes, one of his top charges will be ensuring that we're implementing all aspects of the mobility plan, which will include the bicycle and pedestrian plan. And we've actually got a meeting scheduled for Friday of this week. Unfortunately, he won't be on board yet, where we did receive several questions from the bicycle advocacy groups. Miss rumor actually has created a Google Google document that we're kind of using to facilitate some of that dialogue. And I've got a cross departmental team focused on answering some of those questions. One of the things with several of us being new to our roles is we've inherited a lot of projects that are already midstream in terms of construction and design. So one of the things that he's going to be charged with right out of the gate is finding out ways that for these projects that we already have underway, how do we retrofit them to ensure that we're not just looking at vehicular traffic, but we're looking at the needs of pedestrians, bicyclists and those that are alternatively abled as well. And so that is going to be one of his top priorities, that he will be an active member of each of our capital projects teams, starting from initiation all the way through to construction, working with the bicycle community, working with pedestrians, also working with the committee on persons with disabilities to make sure that all of those different lenses are being looked through as we're finalizing design and constructing these important projects. Excellent questions, comments, other committee members? Councilmember McGuire. Thanks. I question, will this new coordinator have any involvement in public transit plans? Yes, he will. So I guess, let me answer that in two ways. When the city has capital projects that involve access to public transit facilities, he'll, of course, be a part of that from the city's team. But we are, of course, always working on, and I apologize, I'm doing something weird with my screen that I'm worried I'm going to mess up Zoom. Okay, hopefully that didn't mess anything up. But we are actively working with DCTA on making sure that the city's voice is heard as they're planning new facilities and new projects. And of course, we will be using him, his expertise as a transportation planner as we make those recommendations and ask of the DCTA board as well. Great, glad to hear that. I want to make sure new coordinator who is listening that you know, and I think that you do know this already, since you've been watching meetings that, you know, this is a community that's really engaged and really passionate about these issues. So we're really looking forward to having you join our team and help facilitate these projects because there is a great need and a great deal of enthusiasm from the community. I have kind of a, I guess a procedural question, I want to make sure I'm clear on, you know, the exhibit to identify items of interest for future consideration. Are you asking us right now to identify items of interest for future consideration? Is that just a list of things that have been discussed? That's an excellent segue. And I can, of course, leave it up to chairperson Mulser. But typically, I think Becky goes through the staff memo, which today was very short just involved the update on the, the senior planner bicycle pedestrian ADA coordinator position. But I was planning on transitioning, pulling that up, giving you a few quick updates and then asking you if you had any additional items that you wanted us to add and follow up in a future mobility committee meeting. So Mr. Chair, if that's your desire. Yeah, that sounds like our typical M.O. Then I will pull that up very quickly here. And this is, I apologize, a little bit small. I'm looking for zoom here, but it is also included in your backup. So I'm having trouble seeing where I can zoom in. So I do apologize. But there are really only three items on there. One we've already hit on, which is the update on the senior planner position. Second is provide future items for consideration report, which is what we're doing right now. And then the third one is provide a summary of traffic engineering related engaged in request. And I will note that I've had several conversations with the city manager's office on the capabilities of engaged in those capabilities are somewhat limited. And unfortunately, because of the way the requests that come in are categorized, it's a very manual process. If we were to create a heat map or even just create a consolidated list of all of the engaged request that we receive on a daily basis that pertain to traffic related items, not impossible. But the recommendation that I got from the city manager's office was if there are key themes, if there are key projects where you want to find out the type of information that we've received, we can of course pull those. If there is a project where we're wanting to pull specific information from the public, I believe most of you have heard of our new discuss Denton, which is kind of an interactive add on feature to the city's website. We're actually testing it and we've had a lot of great success with the all way crossing project that we have on the downtown square. So that's another way for us to get some of that feedback. But the recommendation that I received from the city manager's office was, you know, we've got the 311, which is going to have very sophisticated mapping reporting capabilities that is underway right now. And by fall of 2022 should be fully operational. So something that we can absolutely have with our new 311 system. But it may be that if it's a specific project, there's another way that we can get to that without kind of going through the manual ongoing manipulation that would be required in order to have that heat map or standing list of open engaged Denton requests. Okay. Anything else? Now we open up to open to new items. Chairman, so we have engaged in, we have discussed it, and we're going to have 311. Our community should be very, very happy that we're giving them an opportunity for all three of these ways to connect with the city. And you'd see that the for clarification, you see the engaged didn't is more of a manual. I've never used engaged in, but I have a feeling I'm going to be using it from my own little neighborhood here pretty soon. I'm so sorry to interrupt your flow, but just to kind of keep us on posting. We're really not posted to discuss the items. It's more to just to tee them up for future discussion. Okay. All right. Well, I was just going to clarify that it engaged didn't. We're manually putting in all of the information and then discuss didn't. I'm sorry. How does that work? Really quickly and I'm looking to try. So tell me if I'm getting too far off the reservation, but this was an item that we had listed as an attachment. So really quickly, the request that we're responding to was engaged and of course, as an app, you can use it on your phone. You can go online and also submit those requests. The request we had of the committee is can we aggregate the request that we're receiving as staff so that the mobility committee could see at summary level, either via a map or a report, all of the requests that come in that pertain to mobility and transportation related items. And so what I was responding with is it's a little bit more difficult than it probably sounds, but we do have alternate options to get feedback from the community. Discuss Denton through the city's website is one of those. And then long-term fall 2022, the 311 system will give us that reporting capability, which should make it very easy to provide those reports that the mobility committee requested. Okay. Other items of interest for future consideration? That's one we'll go over. Yes. You know, it's already been said, but I just want to reiterate the importance of reviewing that the by Denton plan and ensuring that all of our projects are meeting the goals that we set forth in that plan. Yeah. I'd like to suggest that a sort of status update of the key elements of that be added to the, to the sort of transportation mobility project update we get so that, you know, there's just a check-in. So I'm suggesting that for consideration that that's a way that it could come back to us. And just on my very narrow little thing that I've brought up many times on the topic of West Oak between Bradley and Thomas, I'd like to hear if it's going to be, if it's on some list could be a list of things we're going to ask about in the future, but I think we need a plan to either fix it or charge admission to it. We will add that to the list. Okay. I'd say a dollar ride ought to do it. All right. I think that's it. Unless anybody else has anything else going once, going twice. All right. We will adjourn at 1207. Thanks everyone. Thank you.