Mar 21, 2018 Mobility Committee on 2018-03-21 11:30 AM

Item 34. Our first item for individual consideration is item A. Thank you. Our first item for individual consideration is item A. Consider approval of the Mobility Committee of Denton City Council meeting minutes of February 21, 2018. Chair will entertain a motion. Councilwoman Briggs. I'll move approval. Second. Motion and a second. All in favor. Aye. Passes. Item B. Receive a report. Hold a discussion and provide direction regarding regional transportation council monthly reports and actions. Do you know who's going to be presenting on this one? Well we have John Polster here and and I can handle that as well but what we really wanted to do is just bring forward A. the agenda. If there was anything on the RTC agenda that the RTC representative wanted to touch base there is an item on here that we would walk through with the committee very briefly. There's a long presentation as it relates to mobility 2045 and just some of the impacts as it relates to loop 288 and some of the toll managed lane features on 35 into our community. Okay. So this is this is in a pdf format but really very quickly what we wanted to do at least from a staff's perspective is give you a heads up. We've been talking in our own system reports about the timing and sequencing of loop 288 west so on the west side of the airport how the environmental clearance and sequencing with respect to funding has to play a role with the with the mobility 2045 update and so really what this is showing here on the map as provided by North Central Texas Council of Government is loop 288 and it's a staged facility. You may recall that one of the things we're talking about is establishing one the corridor through the environmental process so the the full width of the corridor and then moving forward with the actual construction of one of the frontage roads either the northbound or south bound frontage road so you'd have then that would be in the initial stages a you know one lane in each direction so you'd have the two lane frontage road that would be the initial phase construction so you'd have a northbound and southbound lane initially and then once additional funding was made available the entire corridor would be or the entire facility would be constructed which would be essentially the what you see on the east side or the northeast side of town so you'd have a two two lane each direction main lane and then the two two lanes northbound and two lanes south bound frontage road. Mr. Pulsar would did you want to visit a little bit about the funding constraints with that? So the project is uh has about a 150 close to 200 million dollar price tag for a full controlled access facility it includes grade separations both at 35 35 w the railroad and 380 so those will be grade separated and we have a dollar amount earmarked in the 20 to 30 million dollar range for the frontage road and on one note on that is TechStock is ambivalent as to whether they do the north bound and southbound frontage road and they would look to probably be the city for direction on that and i'm thinking probably the north bound would probably be the first one because it's the inside part of the loop and you can make a lot of your connections for the stuff that's inside the loop like your airport your power plant etc but it'll be either one and it'll look to the city for direction on that so we would bring that back through the mobility committee for a recommendation to take to full council we'd do that probably once the 2045 plan is approved and start moving that process and i think towards the end of this powerpoint presentation because the rest of it goes with transit and why not they tell you the schedule that they're headed on and that 's the schedule that we're tracking in order to move 288 up in the in the schedule for the environmental clearance and so the other the other the other component on that one since the west side would be a controlled access like an interstate highway physically by design right and i'm good with that i guess my question is would we be thinking are they already designing the idea or have we already do we have input into where exits would be that is an ongoing conversation that we've been having with city staff with dme because in the airport because right now we have time to adjust those ramp locations to be maximizing the city's access points and so we're coordinating that as we go through the environmental document because i 'm glad you were talking already about the the access road on the inside being done first because that's going to be closer to the airport but i would hope that we would have exit ramps there so that people can get in and out of the exit so in the interim it'll just be a two-lane road just like a regular road the schematic that's being improved environmental clear that has both the both frontage roads and the main lanes the grade separations and the ramp locations and so we're working with city staff and the airport and dme to make sure that those ramps are in the location that are consistent with their long-range plans for those sites what is what is known is clearly there'll be ramps for us 380 on the on ramp off ramp there and then most likely for 24.99 but that also ties right into to 35 24 did i say 24.49 i'll always do that 24.49 rather than 24.99 councilman briggs this for clarification so the um the full road will not be built but you're going to do the frontage road first that is correct faced so it will it will connect both ends to make the loop fully accessible at present it's only connecting if you see 35 w to the existing loop 288 where it stops north of or up near the um the outlet malls what you see here is what they call the outer loop that's outer loop which is further north than the existing loop 288 so the loop 288 will you'll be able to get off at 35 w and drive all the way around to 35 and then continue on back around to 35 if you want through the front you'd want to do that but you could i mean you'd want to go in a circle but semi-circle okay so there there is some debate as to how and if you could ever make that connection um on from basically 370 you know 35 w to 377 and on around there's some significant environmental challenges with the flood plain with hickory creek as well as additional or you know development uh residential development through that area okay i know that this committee has seen um some plans like initial design plans and has made some decisions those are still standing absolutely okay and the so the frontage road you're saying will only go one way and it's possible that we can get it to go so it's just um envision the existing interstates you've got two lanes frontage lanes in each direction northbound south bound and then you have your main lanes in the middle we're clearing the whole schematic the entire corridor but then the construction and the initial phase would just be the two lane frontage road and what we're suggesting is is the northbound frontage road because it's on the inside but you'd have two lane traffic in the interim so one lane in each direction okay so you would still have that okay do we yeah is there is there an estimated date for the the full completion uh no we don't we don't have it funded no okay and we can cover that in a little more detail when we do the on system report okay and walk through a little bit of timing and sequencing these really kind of tie together it was it's kind of a larger document that uh that the rtc has been working on and we'll take action on in june of this year and once that clears up it starts rolling the funding um starts clearing up funding um for that interim construction okay thank you i am um curious about what is identified on the map is 377 going east and west uh up there on the northern part well between the lakes okay so that is actually a dual designation 377 is actually that white line that goes north and south right it just happens to be touching the blue line that goes east oh okay so what is that blue line that's the outer loop could somebody explain that a little bit more so your thoroughfare plan shows a portion of the outer loop coming in to the corridor on 35 somewhere around myelin road the outer loop if you look goes from denton county crosses collin county grows down the uh sorry rolls down the eastern side of collin county hits rockwall county at 30 now rockwell county also has their thoroughfare plan being updated and they're going to continue that line south into kaufman county you got to move the map up and then kaufman county's got it on their thoroughfare plan to come down and hit basically uh just to the right of where it says 175 on that purple line and then it'll tie into 45 at ennis in ellis county by sh-34 so you'll be able to go see 34 right there at ennis it comes up right where his marker is there's a in the kaufman county thoroughfare plan there's a freeway that goes straight up across 75 uh 20 80 and it picks up a rockwall county leaves off and then it goes up and ties into that red line so it'll be an outer loop you got the 635 you got the bush and then you got the outer loop so my guess is is that uh some of that proposal is already in the denton city limits uh it's in your thoroughfare plan i don't know if it's an etj or city but that line should be somewhat representative of the actual alignment in your thoroughfare plan and the county's thoroughfare plan because cog has both of those okay what is the funding situation on that nonexistent okay thank you thanks okay please go ahead yeah you need to make it smaller again yeah i'll get there hold two there we go so um here what we just wanted to to demonstrate is this is more or less um getting to that next phase of 35 e and it's including the the additional main lane capacity as well as managed lane capacity as you if you've traveled 35e now that it's been completed or substantially completed the managed lanes stop in the current hickory creek area and so essentially what this is demonstrating is that managed uh would would have a managed lane as well as additional capacity all the way up to 380 and so that's essentially what they're they're trying to bring across with this particular plan and essentially when when this comes forward it's the plan the plan is financially constrained so you've got to demonstrate how you're going to fund you've got a certain amount of funding that you have available and the regional planners have to put forward this plan that demonstrates how it may be funded or the funding deficiencies and how they would address that in the future so in and of itself that's really all i wanted to point out um you know that that that plan's moving forward um uh back up that's the schedule so the rtc action is june 2018 that's that's that's that's hit then all of these times that i tell you that we've got these out years for projects because they're not in the plan once that's approved that you saw that includes luke 288 and whatnot once it's in the plan we can go back and revise the date to a more current time frame because it's now in the plan if that makes sense any other questions on it the feds won't let you spend any money on any projects that 's not in a mobility plan and so you can't environmentally clear it if you can't spend money on it and so that's why we needed to get it into the financially constrained plan so that we can clear it so we can get onto the next step so i think a couple of takeaways that you may have on this is is one that it impacts loop 288 and will and staff will will be bringing back a loop 288 discussion for the mobility committee to consider and and make a recommendation for formal council action as to whether it's the northbound or southbound frontage road as part of that facility again this starts that that funding mechanism that clears for uh clears environmentally clears funding capability then or for tex dot to put funding on it to start the right-of-way acquisition and subsequent to that the construction construction phase of the initial phase i think council member breaks has a question so this is kind of related but the um there's a significant shortfall from the presentation that that i'm seeing and then there's um also no new toll roads allowed correct is that something that we should worry about yes okay and then when i when we were in um dc uh last week i heard that it's possible that for the infrastructure plan that they want us to toll existing roads is that something that you have heard and how does that work like old roads you would have to pay to drive on old roads i don't know how they're approaching tolling uh existing or older facilities unless they're talking about adding a toll component to to that particular corridor so if they're to come through similar to 35 where 35 is adding additional capacity and additional capacity in terms of a general purpose lane as well as adding a general capacity or no i'm sorry adding additional capacity in the form of a toll managed lane so that's a that's a toll component of that corridor and that may be what they're suggesting so i'd like to add a little bit of clarity on a little bit of the federal law is moving towards more innovative financing right so they're talking about using leveraging toll finance private sector funding etc the state's ironically led to charge over the last 10 or 12 years doing that and now they are backing away from that but currently in the state of texas there's no ban or prohibition on uh building a toll facility whether it's a managed lane or an actual toll road there is opinions there are feelings there are thoughts that have been communicated by the governor lieutenant governor at all but there's no policy restriction that allows bans toll roads in the state of texas with that said the commission is currently taking it upon themselves to decide they're not going to put any more money in their they're their system on anything that has a toll component they they don't have a they have a policy ability because you the commission gets to regulate intervening every other two years with the legislature comebacks and corrects them which they could or couldn't do that i'm not sure they will but there is no ban on toll toll roads and so the mobility plan is a plan for 2045 and so the mpo is that federal authority that it says it has to look out into the future independent of what texas or the state does and determine what their needs are how much money is available what the shortfall is that's federal required so the metropolitan planning organization still has in its mobility plan multiple managed lane facilities that they have not removed off of their plan because it's their authority to make those determinations and the people that are arguing about it today are not the people that are going to be implementing it in 2035 2040 2045 so you may have a a policy that's in the state that's contrary to the feds but the mpo will go ahead and develop its plan based on federal guidelines the one exception is the state has a law that prohibits the conversion of an existing free lane to a toll facility so there will there's a law that says if you've ever had a car drive on that road and you didn't charge them you cannot convert that that pavement to a toll facility you can move it over and put a toll road where it used to be but you can't toll that existing lane in the state of texas so if it's free today it'll be free tomorrow you just may have a neighbor that's paying to go faster okay unless federal law changes that they're going the 100 miles an hour the other way yeah so they've got this huge infrastructure bill that's only federally funded 20 30 percent and the other 70 percent is this innovative toll concept where you got to go out and find private sector entities you got to go out and use fees etc so the feds aren't putting dollar for dollar in they're saying we'll put in money but you got to match it with outside state dollars so that we have a problem right now because the federal government's going this way and the state's going this way thank you any other questions that's all right okay then i think we can move on to item number three are you who's going to be doing the presentation for that i 'm assuming that's me but i i gotta go up there you ask that every time you always have to go up there is it on here no we're just going up there's not a presentation there's the time great there's not a presentation he's going to walk through the information that was in the back of him okay all right well then you didn't have to get up there and i was wrong i'm sorry i'm good that's uh way better that was cruel all right item c receiver report hold a discussion and make a recommendation regarding pending action by the rcc regarding the advancement of the i h 635 lbj east project i i requested this item be placed on the agenda just because if there i think john will do a good job of explaining but if there is action a vote that's needed to be taken at rtc i'd like to have direction from both mobility and the full council for that vote whether it's me or john that takes the vote so in your backup i don't know if you had a chance to read it uh the last 10 days or so there's been a correspondence war i guess between the commission and the regional transportation council the 635 east project is a told managed lane in our plan and it's been in the plan for 20 years in this format it is uh supported by city of dallas dallas county garland mesquite and i think that's all the cities so every community along the corridor has passed a resolution endorsing the project that's in the mobility plan as a told managed lane facility at the end of the day there'll be 14 free lanes 14 tax supported lanes and there'll be four toll lanes in that corridor the commission as i was stating earlier has decided through its regulatory authority to not move forward on any facility that has a toll component included in it now that's slightly in my mind an overreach because what the legislature submitted and on prop one and prop seven was the proposition one money and proposition seven money if the voters approved would go out to build new infrastructure for anything other than a toll facility so prop one and prop seven does have a prohibition to be used on um toll facilities but you've got a list of categories that are rank your federal funding and category two is the federal dollars that are pure federal dollars that the metropolitan planning organization determines where those funds go initially the mpo honored the state's prohibition of prop one and prop seven money not going on to a total component because they put prop one and prop seven in both category four connectivity and category 12 for the the free lanes or the open lanes program in cat 12 so the mpo put category two dollars on 6 35 federal dollars and remember federal dollars not only don't have a prohibition against tolling some portion of the project they have an encouragement to do that the commission reacted negatively because the texas transportation commission okay so the governor appoints these five people and their patronage appointments they're not elected they 're just appointments and then they have an executive director of text dot and then bill hell and all those guys work for the executive director who reports to the five member commission john importantly from what i understand the texas transportation commission implements laws that are passed by the legislature yes so although the governor appoints those members they're an agency that implements laws correct and sometimes in the office cycle they interpret them how they wish and so 635 was going to be moved forward as a toll managed lane using federal dollars but in order to do that the mpo had to remove the category 12 dollars that the state put on it and so the commission says you cannot use our money move our money around because category 12 is commission discretion so the commissioners at the commission level select those projects and so michael didn 't just take it off of category out of lbj he put it on recommended other projects and then he took the category two from those and put it on 635 so it'd be a pure federally funded project the commission balked at that and then they said you need to put it back and they said the week the region says we can't put it back because our policy says it has to have a toll managed lanes and they said well you put it back and then use it on the free lanes or the tax supported lanes and then you can use category two to build the toll lanes so it'd be two projects let separately with two different funding categories to one contractor exactly that's where the commission wanted to go and so the metropolitan planning organization says we want that in writing right because that's not a counter to what the legislature wanted we didn't get it in writing but what we did get was a letter from the governor lieutenant governor and hall senator hall and senator huffines saying that this was a accounting gimmick and the commission's overstepping their boundaries and so the commission raised their hands up and said what there's gambling going on in this establishment i mean they didn't they acted like they didn 't know anything about it and so they at the december 2017 commission meeting they pulled lbj east and 35w and 45 houston grand parkway and 35 in austin out of the plan they just pulled them out of the plan which is they're allowed to do that so is the mpo we've got concurrent so if the state and the mpo don't agree they can't move forward and so the way the state projected his their disapproval was they pulled it out of the plan and that's the only thing they could do to stop the region from building lbj east using federal dollars because there's no state dollars and there's no prohibition so the mpo if they use federal dollars they could belt lbj east on its own with its own dollars but the state has concurrence and so the way they killed the project was just pull it out of the plan we could pull it out of plan right now if they want to try to force it as a project that we don't want to do then we can just pull out a plan and nothing gets done on l bj it just languishes so in january went down had a communication saying look we want to find a path forward everybody supports this project as a toll managed lanes from a local government standpoint all the cities have passed resolutions there were elected officials there saying we want the same thing that the rest of the region has etc etc commission goes well there's a billion dollar shortfall and so we're not going to move forward until there's a billion dollar shortfall covered and so in the interim between january and march the region was supposed to go back and identify an ability to fund the shortfall only way they can do that is by cannibalizing and delaying other projects in the region to put it in perspective a billion dollar shortfall over the next 10 years the region was only going to get six point nine billion dollars to build all the stuff that's in the plan and now they're being asked to take and find a billion dollars out of that six point nine and put it on one project because the toll component generated about seven hundred and seventy million dollars for the construction and we were looking at a three or four hundred million dollar tiffy loan which you can get when you have a toll component you take those away you had a billion dollar shortfall and now the region the commission is asking the region to identify how to cover the shortfall and they can only do it with the money they have and so they have seven billion dollars in the plan right now and they got to find a way to cut a billion out of it to move it to lbj one of the projects on the bubble is 35e from 635 to the dentin dallas county line and the reason that's important to dentin county and its residents is two-thirds of the collector distributor between 121 and bush is in dallas county if you're driven down there at all you'll know in an am and pmp that the collector distributor is not working and there's a significant reconstruct we have to do to figure out what's going on there and so that 264 million bucks is gone don't know what you that means the collector distributor is not working okay so in the am peak period southbound there are more lanes in the collector district and more cars in the collector distributor than there are on 35 so you got six lanes of traffic for 35 and you got three and a half two and a half lanes because they're merging on the collector distributor you have three entrances all at one time you got the 121 frontage road you got the 121 northbound and you got the 12 1 southbound and you got the 35 people trying to get into the collector distributor to get to the bush right so you it's actually four you have four people four entrances coming into the collector distributor for three lanes distributing out to another six lanes and so there's too many cars along the collector distributor from what we anticipate it so we've got to fix that and that's a it's probably going to be uh somewhere in the neighborhood of you know 250 million bucks so it's that area right in there there's a collector distributor 121 in the bush so if you 're coming southbound and you want to get on the bush you cannot get onto the the president george bush from the main lanes you have to enter the collector distributor in order to get there and the ultimate you won't have to but we didn't build the ultimate and when you say collector distributor you're talking about what we call service roads nope these this is a this is a road between the frontage roads and the main lanes okay so you have main lanes collector distributor and uh friends and the reason they call it that it's a it's a directly descriptive process it collects all the people that are making merging movements puts them into one area and then it distributes them uh where they need to go i always heard it called the mix master or something along those lines okay that's just a large interchange uh collector distributor is a facility that brings everybody that's going to conflict into one area and then distributes them out to those locations separate from the main lane traffic and what you're saying is there's not enough capacity there's not enough capacity okay it's always backed up like 35 will keep going and then yeah you can you're what i do if i need to get going southbound on the bush i won't i won't get into the collector distributor i'll start on the main lanes that exit sandy lake and you got a quarter of a mile bushes there nobody's there and you take off so collector distributors not working that 264 that they're cannibalizing to put on 635 is for that project so it does have a direct impact to some of the improvements we want to make 235 in an interim interim so week ago wednesday the staff of uh text dot met with the staff of rtc and they had a conversation about how to move forward on 6 35 and just ignore the question about how you do the manage lanes because how you operate them is not necessarily impact of how you build them because all you have to do is put the gantries up to toll and so what the region was saying is we just want to move forward and we'll discuss it later the commissioner was saying we 're not moving forward at all until y'all acknowledge that these manage lanes are non-tolled so michael and them had a conversation on wednesday thursday mark williams who's the deputy executive director text dot number two in command sent a draft cover letter for the rtc to send back to text dot a draft resolution and a outline of where the money was to come from to shortfall cover shortfall and wanted rtc to act on march 8th at their commission meeting at their rtc meeting like the following thursday between wednesday and thursday the leadership of the policy board rtc rob frankie from cedar hill gary ficus from tarrant county and andy e ades from denton county got together and said we don't want to negotiate against ourselves so we're not going to act prior to the primary we want to see what happens so we we demurred to to act plus we asked the staff what it meant that they were talking about deferring the the decision on the toll lanes and they didn't like the answer they got from michael and so they kind of put their foot down and so on friday wednesday michael and staff agreed thursday there was this information that got sent to us by text dot staff on friday michael responds with those questions in the packet and those questions are basically are hammering a nail in a coffin because the only the metropolitan planning organization can update the mobility plan only the metropolitan planning organization can update your air quality concurrence and conformity so basically what those questions that rtc sent back to the text dot did was shot a shot of shot across the bow to the text dot saying you can't move forward on 6 35 by bullying us because we have federal authority that's essentially what it meant so the very following day friday chairman bug who thought he had a deal on wednesday sent back that very terse uh snippy response basically saying when y'all get your act together we'll move forward on 6 35 and so rob frankie responded going well when you answer our questions we'll get back on 6 35 in the interim uh and i think uh councilman buggere you'll remember that sandy gration on behalf of the city of dallas stated that the city's position is if if there's a proposal on 6 35 to move forward that doesn't include tolling the managed lanes that they will oppose the project and so that's the big 800 pound gorilla dallas bells on on uh the compromise there won't be one and there probably shouldn't be uh and the reason i'm stating that is is the local communities in those corridors have voted multiple times and they had multiple council elections and at the commission meeting that i was at there were probably 15 to 20 local residents that just live along the corridor that took their time to drive to austin for this public hearing to stay they want the toll managed lanes they want what the rest of the region has they see that it works and they don't want to get short changed that's what they consider getting short chains and so i think the rtc's needs to say look local control these entities have passed multiple resolutions over multiple times this is what they want right this isn't them saying don't toll us right it's saying put the toll lanes in we want them and so the rtc is supposed to reflect what the local governments want and so uh i think where we're headed is that the players that are most directly impacted which are the cities along the corridor on 635 and those that stand to lose money for stuff that they need i.e denton county lewisville all points towards north are standing fairly firm in the point that the commission's overstepping their bounds they don't have legal authority to do what they're doing they do have political might but they don't understand the federal oversight that the metropolitan planning organization has and they were created in 1991 specifically to give local governments concurrent authority to make decisions about their transportation well-being because prior to that the state didn't have to really include anybody in their thought process they could just build roads wherever they wanted so the whole point of the new federal law that changed transportation in the state and the in the country was to give the local governments equal say in their transportation destiny i'm not sure if i ramble on longer than i needed to or if i even answer any questions well i think the summation is essentially that uh there towards the end what he was getting at was that the mpo represents the locals represents the regional uh regional desires in terms of infrastructure planning and implementation and what has happened is is the governor and lieutenant governor are you know have weighed in through the texas transportation commission to change the approach and guideline or policy if you will as to how the rtc which is the policy board for the mpo advances their transportation uh transportation plan and so at the end of the day the question is is um you know how do we how do we address the the shortfall and does does texas transportation commission really have the authority to to undermine the integrity of the mpo let's see who was first on questions councilman bergs did you have a question i have a frustration about or comment yeah so um i don't really have i guess i wrote a few things down so i guess in the in the past how was the shortfall collected because they're demanding that you get the money up front that billion dollars but that is something new that you haven't had to do is that so the uh the answer is is that the reason there's a funding gap on lbj is because of a policy decision by the commission to remove the toll managed land so that created a hole and the commission's saying we're going to create the hole but we're going to expect you to fill it so i mean in the past we haven't had these situations because the commission hasn't uh uh you know opposed what the region is doing because we speak with one voice and we fund it with the funding tools that we have available so when we submit a project for in the 10-year plan and more importantly in the next three years it's financially constrained and funded we we had a plan going forward on this well i that's where the shortfall came from well as a member of this committee i'm in favor and always will be of local control and supporting our local governments um and do not support the commission's overreach so are are we talking about this because we're needing direction for a vote that's coming up at rtc there may be a vote that happens regarding whether or not 635 will move forward and the funding will come out of other projects that are on system and so dallas will be voting no for that and i i need to my inclination is to vote no but i don't feel dallas is voting no they're voting not to take money out of the other projects and to keep the plan as is for 635 or do you have to say that all over again because you're so if there is action on 635 it'll be an up or down vote do we go forward the way that texas transportation department wants or do we go forward the way that the local government's plan has already been implemented or has already been made through the is it 20 30 plan that did that the 2040 a 2040 plan 2045 that were updated and another thing that in the question and answer which is really insightful if you get a chance to read it it's not just that there was a policy it's not a policy because the executive branch of the government does not make policy the legislative branch makes policy and the executive branch implements that's how our system works however the executive branch is making policy at this point favors and didn't high school would be pleased the executive branch is making policy through their memos with respect to toll roads so it's not just a matter of 635 we would also have to modify all of our plans to include no toll component from what i gather that they're requesting correct it's it's 15 separate plans including air quality plans and from conformity from my perspective the most value of toll roads is is the air quality conformity they they help create air quality get us closer to conformity get it get us closer because we're not there but without those lanes where people can essentially tax themselves and go faster we have more congestion which creates more air pollution so from my perspective those environmental plans having to be redone i don't i don't even see how we would ever be in any type of air quality conformity without toll roads well it seems like we're using toll roads as an alternative to fund these projects because there's no desire at the state level to to raise the fuel tax in order to fund these roads so i will just put one fine point we're not talking about toll lanes there are no new toll lanes planned in the north texas area what we're talking about is a managed facility that has a toll component and the money from the toll component is used for what to help offset the cost of the project in construction but also in the maintenance what texas want to do is use the gas tax money that's limited to build those managed lanes as a non-told managed lane and the only place they've given an example in the state of texas where there's such a thing as a non- told managed lane is the upper deck in austin on 35 and everybody knows that is not an express lane you know that's a big parking lot well an a non-told managed lane means that you don't have to pay to use it right but that means they limit the number of entrances and exits so that you are going a longer trip and so the longer the trip with the less conflicts the faster you're supposed to go in theory six i mean 35 into austin has non-told express lanes on the upper deck so well it's not fast no it does have a better view yes it does so councilman greg ory i guess what would be your direction if we were to take a vote i would go with i think that there um is best i can twist through all of this ouch the the regional transportation council needs to have the the flexibility to get the project done okay so i think with the three of us agreeing on that we'd probably take it to full council or yes mark we could do it on the 27th or the third okay um right now it's right now it's scheduled on the 27th but unfortunately in bringing it forward on the 27th we don't have the additional information that may come out of s-tac and what may happen in the next half week to 10 days yeah let's have the resolution as close to the meeting date as possible so on the april 3rd then that was the point i was also going to make is there is a lot of under under negotiations behind the scenes to find a way forward because the what we're hearing is that you know senator hall they spent a million bucks on that race and the hub fines was close to nine million and they we're getting the understanding that they think they 've bit off more than they can chew on lbj east and 35 w because we're actually fighting they're fighting people who want these facilities they're typically having to do with people the six or seven of them that are in opposition in the tea party with those folks opposing it but right here they've got a scenario where they're getting drawn and beat down over a group that wants the the managed facilities because they see that they've worked in the region already so that they're getting a feeling that from what i heard just yesterday that they may be able to find a way to wiggle out of their opposition to toll lanes on the 635 project and on the 35 w project and let these move forward and that way they don't have to fight the most powerful well-heeled metropolitan playing organization in the country behind new york and la and so i think there's some conversations afoot to see how do we get the heck out of this without having a nuclear option because that's what this is the state can't move forward without the mpo and the mpo can't move forward without the state they've got concurrent authority and so i think they're trying to find a way to to let this project go since it's already down the pike as a toll facility and then not have to argue the point statewide because that's the point that the question and answers in the mpo it doesn't just impact 635 because if you know 35e's got another three and a half billion dollar infrastructure improvement that we need and it includes adding two more toll managed lanes to the corridor for concurrent flow so what's the question on those if you're banning tolls does that mean the 35e's environmental document has been cleared as a toll facility does that mean that it's no longer valid does that mean that those conformity issues that we assumed were going to be there because of these managed lanes that subsidized hov facilities does that mean those are gone we're going to have to update our conformity after 2045 so there's a lot of policy questions that if they tried to do this statewide now there's just too many too many things that are broken if they try to do that so there's people are trying to walk them back from from the stupid to just the ridiculous well i think we're all in favor of a resolution so perhaps we could get something brought before the council full council for april 3rd and if we don't need it wonderful if we do need it then it's there and we can certainly send it to michael morris and it'll be one small arrow in his quiver i think showing support for your sister community oh yeah absolutely ultimately it will affect our situation in denton because we're all linked together in terms of road funding so there's just like you use the 35 example the interchange example there's so many examples where this will affect our funding mechanisms in the future madam chair if i if i may clarify the what the resolution will have in it is support for regional or local control support of the m pos mobility plan all of all of the mobility plans that have been implemented has been adopted yes which includes the toll component and then i think i heard something with respect to well we 'll we'll leave it at that um yeah support i'm sorry support of our neighboring community so we talk about region but also support of dallas denton county garland and that should essentially cover if they bring up 635 with a non-toll managed component or non-tolled managed component then it would free myself or john ryan up to vote no on that vote as well just something that's clear enough that we could vote no great we got it okay thanks everybody that was easy peasy all right item number d letter d receive a report hold a discussion and provide direction regarding texas department of transportation transportation on system projects in the denton area to include 35e project now you really do have to get up there i think this will have a focus we can go through each of the projects but i think the two focused projects in interest of time will be on the 35e phase 1b project right now as well as loop 288 because we talked about that a little bit and then maybe 2181 there's not there's not really a lot of action on any of the other other components okay and if somebody has a question about the other ones they can just address those individually and john when you get to the 35e brinker loop 288 i do have a a one slide descriptor on the lane shift i think council received a notice last night about the lane shifts and i just figured i'll kind of demonstrate what that looks like all right i'll just go real quick on the 2181 north south everything's going fine except that this is the same company that's doing this job that did the bridge in florida and there's four contracts that this contractor has in tex as three of them are in denton county just can't catch a break john what are the other three projects i mean 423 in frisco a little l fm 544 in carolton louisville and then 2181 and then we've got one project in collin county so there's three of them out of the four in denton county 2181 544 and 423 how many bridges yes they just don't have as far to fall i don't think okay four-word drive the good news here is is we got on phone conversation yesterday with the union pacific folks and they have given us final approval on their design and they've committed to having the agreement signed by the end of april which we needed it by may so text dot is certifying that this project why doesn't that move up will be let in july of 2018 we just gotta work on some 29 section 5 pre-tim and tina massey with tech stock worked out a a solution to open one lane in each direction there is a notice in your packet that opened i guess last week sometime because i drove it so now you can drive from 35 all the way down to 2181 you just have a stop condition at robinson until the signal is installed and the good news is is that right now it's still technically under construction so there's no speed signs up so there's no actual speed limit other than what the stable out for non-toed non-signed road which is what i think if it's not uh signed it's either 30 or 70 so let you pick pre-tim another answer that i took my son through there the other day and showed him no speed limit signs what's that signal all right so this is one of the projects that we're doing it's the mayhill interchange where we're going to build it its ultimate configuration based on the schematic that was approved and the reason why 635 east also is important to us is because the ultimate configuration for mayhill will include enough width on the bridge deck to include those those managed lanes so in the interim we'll do it the width for mayhill underneath 35 but ultimately we'll need to know what the full width of mayhill is for 35 but that project we should have um we should have a contractor ltr is on contract and they 've had their work authorization executed so we'll start bringing them in and having them do a kickoff meeting with the city to make sure that they're doing what they're supposed to do okay so make this is the brinker 288 mayhill the lane switches have been occurring and we have a schedule completion date still in december which we're still arguing about that december 2018 and there was an exhibit you said i needed uh john when you say they're arguing you're arguing about it what are they still saying january and we're saying they're saying december but our contract says august so we're still trying to get them into the summer okay is it exhibit three presentation plane shift all right all right well okay don't go far you may recall this uh slide i made a slight revision to it but you may recall this slide when staff presented transportation projects to the full council at a work session back in january this just demonstrates from an aerial uh kind of gives you an aerial view of of what the lane shifts look like so here this yellow area is the new is the new um frontage boat frontage road southbound front age road this uh this photo was taken right at uh right at the first of the year so this is this has been completed and traffic is actually on and has been on this on this southbound front age road for a number of weeks and so what's going to happen is this evening they'll do the shift and what this red arrow is is essentially demonstrating is a is a movement of the main lanes it'll use that existing off ramp and go on to what was the former southbound frontage road they've gone through and reconstructed that there's jersey barriers so there's some safety and lane protection in between there they'll that'll shift the traffic onto this former southbound frontage road um and i've lost my cursor so it'll it'll actually come out this is showing brinker that's just because my map cut off there's achievers gymnastics but it'll it will come back onto the main lane corridor the existing main lane corridor roughly right there in front of the achievers gymnastics just south of the buckies development activity and then um south of that the southbound frontage road will then uh have an on ramp onto the uh onto the corridor 35e corridor where they have the three lanes existing so just wanted to give you a little bit of a visual on that well we understand that'll start taking place this evening at about 10 o'clock and they'll wrap that up about six uh 6 a.m or sooner uh they'll probably be a closure of the interstate for anywhere between 10 to 20 minutes as they move some um construction barrels and striping around but as soon as they get done with that they'll they'll actually open it back up um one one lane will get through there they'll have to do some um lack of better descriptors some calisthenics to try and and move and shift the lanes around to make that happen you have a question and that is specifically why they do the work on brinker on the over underpass so good question so what will happen then is once the once the southbound lanes are shifted over to uh that frontage road or the previous frontage road this arrow here is demonstrating uh and i don't have a schedule for that but we understand within the next yeah a few weeks to a month that this northbound traffic main lane traffic will then shift to the existing southbound road and then what will happen is basically from 288 down to this section south of brinker they'll reconstruct the northbound lanes and once and once they get the once they get the northbound main lanes reconstructed they'll do another shift and they'll move the northbound and southbound lanes on the new expanded capacity and then they 'll reconstruct the southbound lanes so what that means is about where the brinker road sign is where that ramp is that's where they'll come in and do fill on either side on the northbound lanes what they'll do is they'll build the northbound half of the structure for brinker and it's they're going to start at that after that 30 days for moving the traffic from the northbound to the old southbound they're going to start working on raising parts of 288 and there'll be a period of time where 288 is closed for an entire weekend for the demolition and we'll get that notice out as soon as we know in advance so once that shift gets off of the northbound main lanes that 's when you're going to see a lot of the heavy lifting coming in so they bring in the select fill they start building the abutments for the bridge Collins and then they'll start to raise 288 so this is all for or in conjunction with the buckies that 's going in not all no ma'am the underpass the underpass for brinker is a component of that and it expands or enhances the the mobility plan in our community by adding that additional transportation component as well as expanding the capacity doubling the capacity at loop 288 and the underpass if you you may recall from that one presentation we're going from five lanes underneath to 10 lanes underneath at 288 but i i there is some concern in the community that that isn't going to be opened at the same time that the there's a very good chance that that is the case right and so is there a possibility that um i think the answer is no because i've asked but buckies will not open until that is done or will we just have to to wait and see so the project itself won't have any control over what buckies does the city may have some leverage the i i believe from talking to uh scott rat clifton engineer they have they fully intend on opening the project sometime in 2018 which is what they did to us on 35 w at 114 when we were building that southbound frontage road they opened prior to the project being completed okay that's what that implies that's what i was thinking okay thank you so other than the fact there'll be some congestion in the area this evening and probably through the morning until that clears up and then a slow down as uh as the detour takes place on the main lane traffic the other takeaway is is that they'll be doing these this shifting component over the next two to six weeks until they can get everything squared away and we'll certainly bring back information either through an informal staff report a friday report and and most likely on a monthly basis as we come back to the mobility committee to give give you an update on the project if there's any particular questions or or components that you would like a little additional detail please advise and we can see what we can do to get that incorporated to any further information so that's the brinker 288 mayho project so 35 north it's still we're in a holding pattern and clearly we're not going to be able to do anything on 35 north until we get rid of a controversy with lbj east that's the other thing that lbj east is doing particularly to the eastern sub region is there are a lot of projects on the bubble that are waiting for the results of 635 to decide how they 're going to move forward and remember the most important part financially is is that the commission is asking the region to backfill a billion dollar shortfall in a 10-year plan that only has seven billion dollars in it my daddy used to say that's like a pig going through a python you're going to see it you can't miss it 35 w main lanes this project is being done we're environmentally clearing it as a ultimate controlled access facility it currently is a rural freeway which has six lanes of of tax supported lanes and wide medians and wide parkways so that in the future if the policy changes towards managed lanes we have the the real estate there to go back and backfill them but as an interim we are also doing frontage road chunks where development occurs so doing from 35 w south to eagle parkway we're now looking at 1171 north to 2449 is that next phase and so we 're just going to be building the frontage road chunks as development dictates okay so uh i call this the brig's improvement the uh the uh can't get here fast enough tina massie said that she put it in her contract uh this uh this summer that led on march 7th and she's thinking that uh between april and may they'll get out there and add some more lanes to it and i and and mr gragery i talked to uh texted about your idea of closing the northbound and they didn't see really any opposition to that what they want to do is do this first and then if it still needs help go do the eldorado 75 improvements you were suggesting so we should start to see this in a few months hit the ground for there is going to be a designated turn lane at that intersection oh absolutely what's going to happen is is we're going to limit the traffic to the u-turn because there's very little volume for that and we're going to add additional lanes so that the left turn lane you'll have the left and then the it'll be left and u-turn and then you'll have this will be uh a left and through and then you'll have a full right turn lane that goes all the way back to that drainage ditch which is right in here so instead of having it being this long yeah the right turn lane will be all the way back here and what we're doing is we're changing the striping so that if you're in the right lane you're going to be the right turn person if you're in the left lane you choose to go straight straight left left or left u-turn so this lane will always have the dominant right movement to keep the traffic going keep it going all right us 380 east this project is still fully funded a little over 130 million dollars the ready to let is may 2021 we're expecting to get this project environmentally cleared this june they feel very confident about that because they've already got three firms doing the design work on this project and again this will include grade separations at 720 423 navel uh legacy and teal inside denton county so act as a super street loop 28 west so this is the scenario where you're seeing that we're out in 2020 uh for an environmental clearance and that's because we aren't in the mobility plan so come june of 2018 we'll be in the plan we'll be able to update the schedule which will then update everything else that we do after that fm 1515 so this is another project we have um ltr working on and it's my understanding that they are working on the survey in the subsurface the su utility and i'm thinking that we're supposed to continue our coordination with the city if they haven't already done some coordination but we need to keep ltr working primarily what we've communicated to them is this is a state project that the county is paying for but the city's the client because you all got development out there and you got bonnie bray on one end and the airport on the other and in 1830 this was just the project that uh it was adding shoulders and it's supposed to be done by this august and we just put it in there because at some points people were getting some complaints about it but it's kind of kind of petered out now that they got that bridge done any questions any questions looks like we have none thank you so much item e receive a report and hold a discussion regarding pavement art and its use as a traffic calming technique pre-term good afternoon let me pull out the presentation it's a short one traffic art there we go so this was a request from council member pagiri to look at what can we do with pavement art just striping and putting in um some kind of art that would be used as traffic calming so what exactly is the concept of this this is a three-dimensional painted objects on the street such as what do you see here triangles or if you can next slide has some better visuals but based on these paintings people when they first look at it or drivers when they're driving the initial reaction or perception is to slow down and then it's a the effect of traffic calming is primarily achieved by a surprise element and then if as long as it's a new thing that they see it's a novelty of it so that's the concept behind traffic calming art and there are certain pros and cons uh pros it helps slow traffic down at least initially um it can be installed quickly it's a very cheap low cost alternative and initially it can reduce traffic but once people that uh i'm sorry initially it can reduce speed but once people that live in that community and neighborhood know that it exists then the whole it starts to wear off pretty fast so later on once it wears off it can be used as an education. I'm sorry I have two questions. One question when you say it's very cheap from my point of view every time I hear about the cost of painting anything on the street it doesn't sound cheap so what would that cost? Comparatively cheap anywhere between 500 to 2000 dollars it depends on what what type of payment markings you want to install. So something like that could cost 1500 dollars? Yes. Wow. And then how much does it cost to make it go away? Uh it wears off pretty quickly especially in Texas where there are probably a couple years every couple years we need to rep aint our markings to keep it up. Okay thank you. Council Member Br iggs. And can we also use public art funds for this since it's considered? That's a very good question I'm not sure if you can use that. And funds. Okay. I can find out. That was going to be my question which is what are the funding mechanisms that we have for this? Because I know we have transportation related uh what is it called the bond set aside? It's like the four percent of all the transportation projects go to public art related to transportation. So that that was going to be my question is can this be utilized out of that fund? We'd have to look into that and it would also have to to go through the public art commission for approval. Okay what are some other alternatives for funding besides that money? Um we can use some of the traffic payment markings money because we regularly go and refresh crosswalks especially in crosswalks areas and we could allocate some of that funding or we can allocate some of the traffic calming funds. What are traffic calming funds? Meaning we don't have uh necessary every every time we receive complaints one of the things that we have to do is deploy some of the radar signs have PD go out there so all that money can be looked at as to what kind of effort we're putting in to just enforce it and put out some of the equipment to notify residents that they're driving over the speed limit. So all that money can be looked at and see how we can better channelize uh to implement something like this. We don't have an estimate at this point. Thanks so I'm sure that because engineers love to count things and take that kind of data. Uh how it says initially it's effective for reducing speed. What does initially mean in three months it works for about three months and then it doesn't work or or works that's what's what are the numbers? That's a good question um in the AIS I present in one case there they're not that many cities that have already uh implemented this so the amount of data available is very little and um I think initially it can range anywhere between a couple weeks to a couple months and beyond that most of the residents will start ignoring it. I have a follow-up to that because the cities that I've been in have these in um like their downtown areas where there's more visitors and travelers coming through who aren't here every day and it seems to work and it probably would work longer than it would say in a little residential area that you know the neighbors drive in so um that that's just a comment that I wanted to make. Okay. And yeah that picture I would put something like that. That 's very disturbing. When I saw this I'm like this is some these are the cons that's a con that you shouldn't be doing something like this. That is that is that is bad on so many levels because if people start learning if people start learning that they can ignore that yeah then what happens when there's really a person there that's oh my gosh. That's why I put it on the cons slide I'm like this is something that we shouldn't be even it's yeah. I'm sorry. I have granddaughters at age I'm sorry. It's on the cons page just just for the record it is on the bad page. When I saw that I mean some someone put that in and that's really yeah I my son's that age too so yeah. Well I have a question um for you because some of the areas in our downtown are text art roads is this something that is allowed on a text art road would we need to get specific special permission not to do something like this but the design or the the painting is much easier to do than say putting your name on a bridge. They'll allow you they'll allow you to paint they pretty much let you have free reign on what you want to do because in grand prairie I work there too they require all of their all their interstate and state facilities that have any kind of a retaining wall to be smooth and they come in and do commission public art and the state ever doesn't even know what they're going to get when they say yes half the time so painting is easier than just about anything else. Okay thank you for that. I do want to point out one last thing um I looked at what the federal guidance was on this and they have specific guidance saying that any other colors other than the approved white yellow and I think they've approved green for bicycle facilities on the pavement is not allowed if it is used to get a driver's attention and notify or enforce certain things for example crosswalks so if it's not an approved color then they have an issue with using that to control any driver related aspect his behavior any notification any signage that's in the backup I listed that that's a special fhw order that was released right after when these started coming up so that's another thing that we might have to get into as to is it legally allowed we'll have to explore that avenue if we get into using the traffic coming art but if we use the approved colors there's not an issue there's not an issue okay and most 3d could be with black and white or gray essentially correct okay is that your entire presentation that's it it was a short one um discussion makes me wish i would stay on council so i could vote against it against all of it or just the the girl picture against all of it okay you got one no no i'm in favor i think it is especially in the areas that i've been in in the larger cities for the pedestrian crosswalks it draws attention and it makes it more known that that is where somebody's going to be walking so i don't know if it's necessarily to stop traffic but it's to designate the crosswalk so that it's more um visible for somebody that this is the path that you take rather than going here or going there so it does both it calms the traffic down to where they want to stop because they see a large i guess painted area and then it also um draws the the pedestrians in to that one area where that 's where they know they cross so it has worked in the in the cities that i've been in i've seen it um i'm also in favor of just setting this up to the full council i would just say there are some areas where i've gotten a lot of complaints about people going too fast around pedestrians especially children congress street around calhoun is one of them and obviously they need actual infrastructure not just 3d painting but this seems like something that could happen pretty quickly at the beginning of the school year to bring people's attention to the traffic flows so i would say if we can just take a look at some high traffic areas that have been getting complaints the square is probably another good example some of those cross areas so do you want to start a pilot program something that we can test at congress in calhoun and then get a feedback as to how it's working and then then move forward it's such a temporary thing it's i think it would have to be a pilot program and for the record registering council member gregory's deep opposition to this project is it is it something that we you guys could present to the public art do we want them to check it out or is it still not even that well i think if we don't need the public art funding for i mean if if it's not needed from them then would we need to go in front of them no i just didn't know if we had enough okay i think we can send it to them if the full council wants to fund it more broadly than a pilot okay all right thank you for the next item is uh the matrix coming up item f i think who's going to do staff reports okay i've got this one or actually there's a couple of them and i'm going to start with uh we i'm going to start at item six if you're okay with that whereby pretend just uh address the committee on traffic common uh speed limits that would be pre-tem yes um speed limits on university and it's been a little while but i'm thinking this is right on the eastern segment of university east of bell between uh bill and the loop is that what we wanted to uh council member yeah so the current set speed limit there is 45 um just east of bell is 40 and then it transitions immediately into a 45 segment and um typically texar conducts speed surveys to set these speed limits and it's all based on federal guidelines so reduction of speed limits um and reducing them um we'll have to do a speed study and if the speed study comes back where 85 85 percent of the people are around 45 miles an hour which i think they're probably more than that than uh text we can justify um or appeal to text dot to reduce that speed so that's have you contacted uh calvary school um i did um call them up and i haven't received a response back but you're talking about the uh school zone in that that's good off of that's the next i think there's the next um okay on the yes so um calvary does not uh currently the way it's set up it doesn't have a median opening uh school zones are typically set up on streets that have openings and have kids crossing in the middle of the street from cross sections at noddingham there is a signal with crosswalk so technically irrespective of the speed that the cars are traveling when the signal turns uh to a pedestrian only phase that's the only time they'll be crossing so um and then there's no median opening for cars to make left into the calvary uh drop off area so that's that's the only reason why a it won't be considered the other issue is it's not a public school which means it doesn't have an attendance area that's defined where kids are walking towards that so that's the other issue um uh that it would be hard to justify a school zone there but i'll get feedback from them where their school uh kids are coming from i can't remember we're noddingham crosses university there you're talking about pedestrian traffic is there a is there a button for pedestrian crossing because there's some times when an automobile can't even cross before it turns yellow one automobile there but never google maps and there's all see if google does it all must be able to do track for you all i'll be darned it does have one okay i don't know how you're doing what you're doing but it's scary street view okay so this is the crosswalk that actually goes and there is a button on both sides so they can cross this way to get to every is there a button on that side to let them cross to the school yes that that's the button okay oops okay thank you thank you the next item is item nine as it relates to your presentation about vbikes and other vendors you may recall that vbikes has chosen to move out of the community we're actually working with them to try and identify how we might get them to remove the remaining bikes they we don't we don't know and i don't think they know as to the total number left we've been engaged with our with the fire marshal who has community improvement services as well as our police chief and then our legal staff to see how we can best remove those bikes which are now being considered as abandoned property with respect to the other specific requests made by council member gregory we've been engaged have been visiting with line bikes and what we'd like to try and do is bring line bikes see if we can get them to come and visit with the mobility committee as as per his request line bikes and ofo about their business model and how they how they would like to roll out if they chose to roll out service in our community one final comment is is that spin is still working with the universities both universities on how they will eventually roll their program out we have not yet received an official application from spin but i do understand that we we are engaged with spin in advancing what what they eventually will roll out in terms of permit application i have a question about the v bikes because i have seen seen some just randomly still here and i didn't know if uh they had left the city or not and so with our ordinance being passed at what point do those get impounded now is what we're telling them now okay so it's kind of like a yesterday was the two-week effective date of the ordinance and they had asked for some leniency to pull their their assets out we think two weeks is more than lenient enough right and are in fact right before i came to this meeting our one of our city attorneys was engaging with v bikes to let them know that we will be uh impounding or otherwise uh removing those bikes out of the public right of way okay it really suggests that their positioning technology to find these bicycles is pretty bad yeah i thought i saw three of them earlier this week where collins road and mingo road intersect they were they were just piled up i will add that when we were in dc um last week the thing there is not only the the bikes but they have the scooters the lime bikes or lime scooters and um i just happened to uh see two kids with their skateboards on top of the scooters and they were without helmet riding down the hill and i just was like oh my goodness how do you prevent something like that it was it was insanity so get ready get ready for that it's population control it's it is it is it's really the next generation we we had no sooner really got what we thought was close to about an 80 to 90 percent policy as it relates to just the traditional well actually the bike share dockless bike share program and we started seeing some commentary come out with the new with the different uh technologies both the scooters as well as e-bikes same thing with the e-bikes so uh we'll have to look to see how we we address that we may need to add scooters up front to our ordinance or something just because if they're owned by the same company fyi the next item is item 10 i just wanted to bring to your attention that um i've been working with dcta on some on on some pasture amenities issues they've they've engaged with the council of governments to to seek some funding i think in the neighborhood of about 40,000 it's an 80 20 split and they're going to fund that and move forward they've identified roughly 50 stops bus stops uh shelters as well as benches and regular stops that they would like to do some improvements for ada and this is specific to ada or just overall accessibility they've identified over 50 stops whether that 40,000 will address each of those but it's going to be in the round or animal or magnitude of potentially 500 to 2000 dollars per stop where they would have that where they would add some additional ramp and you know connectivity components and we we would probably be working with them we have funding in the transportation fund to assist with with maybe the permit component to to work hand-in-hand with the with dcta to get some of these uh stops enhanced i believe there was some information that went out in your packet in the friday reading file as well any questions if you have no questions about the matrix that brings us to our final concluding items any concluding items i have some too yes councilman breaks first so um recently i learned someone sent me a picture of the i think it was oak street bike lane the right there's a where it goes straight and then there's the bike lane and there was someone turning right but using the bike lane and i learned that it is okay to for a vehicle to go into the bike lane when there is not a solid white line but a a dash line and so i didn't know that and i'm sure a lot of other people um bicyclists i don't know may or may not know that um but in that conversation the chief weighed in and enforcement on enforcement and also on a few other things um with bike lanes and it made me realize that we need to have a full discussion and i'd like to have that here um on protected bike lanes um i would also i would like to know um like what our plan calls for um what we do and things that have changed since we've implemented it as far as the engineering of bike lanes and uh what if there's anything that uh people are doing now that they weren't yes so right here even though it's painted green with a big bicycle on it a car can still drive in there and so correct yeah it's yeah so uh yes according to federal and state guidelines this particular area that extends about 60 feet to 90 feet depending on the speed of speed limit of the street is actually an area that's called um not a conflict area but an area where cars and bicycles merge or use the same space for maneuvering and the reason this came about is a lot of the issues arising from bicycle lanes being on the right side of the street and cars trying to make a right turn lane from the shared right through lane uh there was a lot of um people were not noticing bicycles that were coming by at a higher rate and making this right turn lane at the last minute so based on the incidences and collisions that happened um it was decided and that it was a better idea to establish an authority of who actually is using this particular space first on a first come first basis so once a car or motorist comes in he can pull into this lane making sure that he has every space here to make that and if a bicyclist is there he has to wait his turn to use that space to go straight so that that was an area of um and the reason this is painted green is any area that there is a known conflict zone or known um known use area for both types of motors as well as bicyclists that's painted green that's a similar thing happens on the other side uh that chief pointed out was uh there is a right turn lane here that this is slightly different configuration this is a um assigned or exclusive right turn lane so the conflict area is back here where cars merge in and out when while bicycles go in there so if you have uh an exclusive right turn lane this this is a better configuration where the uh in you know merging and diverging happens at earlier than the intersection and everyone knows where they're going so that's why this is slightly different than the other scenario um we're off posting this is my imaginary paper so we need to put this on the agenda right this is what i'm i would like to have that on the uh for a future work session and in that work session if we could have a list of bicycle accidents that have occurred in the last year or so as well that would be good thank you may i clarify that request when you said work session you said work session here at mobility committee versus at full council yes sir okay very well thank you do you have any more councilman um i would like to um in dc when we were learning about the infrastructure plan there was something about the funding mechanism changing from what is currently 80 percent them 20 percent us to the opposite uh 20 percent them 80 percent us and so if we could just have an update on what that looks like um for cities and um also i would like to say thank you for the trees uh at 380 i saw that they went in and they look really nice council member uh gregory thanks um i saw in the news recently about the arlington transit plan uh the largest city not to have public transportation just like to get a report on how they're doing that and if there's anything that they're doing that that might translate to dcta that we could recommend to dct a uh secondly uh if we could just have on an upcoming agenda some items about the freak some from time to time we have streets in our downtown area that are fairly narrow where we've had parking conflicts with uh emergency vehicles getting through specifically and we've done some corrections on some of those but but there's a continuing question on right lane right between east prairie and warren uh so need to get that and the final thing is i'd like to hear a report if we're going to do public art on the streets then since denton is music city then i'd like to know about musical roadways you know where you go at a certain speed uh so so there's a sign saying travel 20 miles an hour and as you go on 20 miles an hour there are um harmonics on the road where they put things across the road and if you go at 20 miles an hour you can hear america the beautiful or texas our texas and uh i've been on one of those in albu querque new mexico and it seems much more appropriate than uh so so as long as we're going to talk about crazy things let 's talk about that one seriously i think i'd be interested in that okay i think that's it with that um we are adjourned at 1 14 p.m