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