>> 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.