- Good morning and welcome to this meeting
of the Mobility Committee of the City of Denton.
We have a quorum, we have a full house.
And so we'll call the meeting to order.
Our first item for individual consideration,
item A, consider approval of the minutes
of July 21st and September 15th, 2021.
I'll entertain a motion.
Council Member Maguire.
- I move approval of the minutes
from July 21st and September 15th.
- I second.
- All in favor?
- Aye.
- Okay, minutes are approved.
Moving on to item B, receive a report
and hold the discussion regarding City of Denton
transportation slash mobility project status report.
- Yes, sir, I'm gonna ask Mr. Polster to come to the podium.
- Good morning, my name is John Polster
with Innovative Transportation Solutions
and I'll be giving you the mobility report.
This morning.
So we'll scroll to, let's do this.
We're gonna make it a little smaller.
So this is the 2181 North South project
that you all are familiar with.
We are still looking at a July of 22 completion date.
This is the tech start report here.
And again, if you have any issues
that you see while you're out there driving,
this report gives you Stacy Clark's cell number
and he's the project manager on this.
So if you see things you need or wanna talk to him about,
you can either talk to staff
or you can call him directly if you want.
The critical path item here is that we're trying
at the end of October to get the switch
to the next phase on this project.
And that October deadline is the critical timeframe on this.
If we can hit that October timeline,
then the sound wall can be addressed after that
and a lot of the other issues that we're waiting on
can be dealt with.
So for this project, there are milestones
and if we hit that, and it looks like we will,
if we hit that end of October traffic switch,
then we got a pretty good chance
of making the project complete on time in July 22.
Okay, this is the 35E Mayhill interchange.
We are working on the plan set
and we have plans anticipated to be provided
to all the stakeholders at the end of this month.
You'll note that on this report,
all of the numbers are, construction dollars
are all changed now and they're highlighted.
And remember, I've been telling you
the last two or three months, they've been inflated
for accounting reasons and now they're back to me,
they would put them back to the real number.
So they've all dropped down to the real number
that it was supposed to be.
So that's why they're all highlighted.
- Is that due to like actual changes in commodities prices?
- No ma'am, last year, so Texas has a 10 year mobility plan.
Well, they have a 20 year UTP,
but a 10 year focused mobility plan.
And they never know what projects are gonna finish on time
and which we're gonna start.
So they always have a surplus of projects in each year
'cause they don't always let on time.
And so they don't balance by year.
For whatever reason, last year, the feds, FHWA came back
and said, hey, your 10 year plan balances over 10,
but your first four years are over programmed.
So you have to go now and reprogram those projects
so that they're balanced per year.
And when they did that, they found that some of the districts
in Houston, San Antonio and Austin,
they weren't logging these projects for year of let.
So we're talking about something that's gonna let in 2025,
the Dallas district, they do a escalation on the cost
to try to hit that 2025 mark.
They don't use the unit prices for today
'cause that's not gonna work.
But the other districts weren't doing that.
So they made them roll in a 3% increase per year
for four years or whatever, and that over-inflated
the Dallas district projects,
but we had to follow the rules.
Now it's done, they've rescinded their requirement
and we're back to the old numbers.
- Can I ask a question, please?
I'm looking over here on the first page, the main page,
and it says something about a row.
There are 43 total parcels.
There are two parcels in appraisal, three parcels in ED.
What does ED mean?
- Imminent domain.
So what happens is it's all, they're all being acquired
through imminent domain proceedings.
That's actually a misnomer.
That means that they're in condemnation.
That means that the two parties couldn't agree on a value
so they just take it to a commissioner's hearing.
So we're letting somebody else decide the value.
Hopefully that will be on the glossary
with my check in a minute.
If not, it will be.
You'll always catch something on these things.
So the Mayo project, we are looking at a ready to let
of September 23.
We're working closely with TechStat
both on the additional scope of this project
and the impact of the utilities.
We're meeting regularly to ensure that we coordinate
with the state and the state's committed
that if there's anything in the state's design
that impacts the city's utilities to the extent they can,
they'll redo the design to minimize the impact
on the city's utilities to help them make the deadlines.
There's a lot of utilities.
So you're at 35E, 35W merge.
Again, the dollars are changed to the actuals.
They've come down.
This project has got a ready to let date of August 23.
The design is not part of the critical path item.
The right of way and the utility relocations
are the critical path item.
We just got the right of way finished in this corridor.
I think it said, yeah, this month.
So we're now moving full into utility relocations
and there are a lot of utility relocations
on this section of road.
As you can see, there's a lot.
And so again, working with TechStat to partner
with the city to find a way to minimize
if at all possible the impacts.
And then if we can't, then try to coordinate
as timely as we can with the state on any impacts on those.
And the things that are highlighted
are things that we noted from the last meeting.
Everybody seems to be playing nice right now.
Okay, y'all see out there, right?
They already got the sub grades done.
They got the ramps taken out on the on ramp.
And I saw them where they already have the pavement down
or the sub grade for the exit.
And I do believe that although we're sticking to right now,
you'll see that it says January.
The last month it was February.
And I think that will even be January on this project.
But yeah, it'll be maybe it'll be a good Christmas present
for all of us.
- I'm pretty sure it said January last time.
- Okay, well.
- But I'm glad it still says January.
- Okay, well, it's highlighted.
So that tells me that my staff is smarter than I am.
If it's highlighted, that means it changed from something.
- I will refer you to the tapes.
I guarantee you I've said to you before January, 2022.
- So I'm saying December is substantially complete,
which means you can drive on illegally.
- That's great.
I'm really glad to see it. - And I get arrested.
- Thanks, John.
- And then your 35 North project again,
it went from like eight something down to 763.
And I've always wondered if we had it before,
why can't we keep the Delta, right?
And it just goes away, I don't know where it goes.
Uh-oh.
So again, this project is gonna be done in three segments,
not because there's any need for it,
except that they wanna keep the dollar amount
per contract below a certain level.
We are still working on a December 23 ready to let date.
The reason you see let dates that are different
than the ready to let is 'cause some of these dollars
are large and those dollars are plugged into a certain year
in that 10 year plan.
And as we get closer to 23, if we think we can move it up,
they'll look to see if there's any other projects
that fell out that allow them to bring it up.
'Cause they don't like to have projects
sitting on the shelf too long.
And again, acquiring right away
and we're work starting the coordination with utilities
and there are utilities on this section as well.
It's less impacting than once you get past,
say like Mylam Road, it's other people's problems
and we're working with them on that as well.
- John, what is that realistically gonna do to the traffic?
Is it gonna basically wrap people over to Bonnie Bray
or during the construction?
- Yeah, well that's why we're trying to get Bonnie Bray
in all those segments done.
It's proven a little bit more difficult
because of the cost of things and COVID didn't help
and a lot of the funding shortfalls showed up.
But it's been the intent for the city,
especially on the Wishbone project
to give them an alternate route.
But it's gonna be tight.
What may end up happening 'cause that's the way my luck runs
is they'll both be under construction at the same time.
- Well, if we get close to that situation,
would we have any ability to put the brakes here,
put the gas there?
- Yeah, so I'm gonna say no, not me, but the process.
If the money's there for the project,
the state's gonna let the project when it's ready.
I'm pretty certain that we can coordinate some of that.
But with the city's got a CIP program,
with a certain dollar amount they gotta spend annually,
and that's scheduled for that time,
I think that it's gonna be hard to not do it.
And this is not unusual.
For in the 2000s, we had Flower Mound
and Highland Village totally destroyed.
And then you couldn't go on 407, 3040, 1171, 2499,
'cause they were all under construction at the same time.
We knew that was gonna happen.
And then they had two million feet of retail
that was coming in at those corners.
And it just was something you just had to bear
because that's just how timing on 'em hit.
- Just seems like if we see something stupid
it's about to happen and we know it.
And it's happened before that,
and we have a good speaking relationship with TXDOT
that maybe we could not just be a victim, I don't know.
So this project is the Bismarck,
or whatever you wanna call it.
It's not gonna change.
Everything around it's gonna have to change
'cause that's almost a billion dollar job
that's gonna let when it lets.
It's kind of on its own steam.
So everything else around it has to kind of adapt.
- Well, I wasn't saying which thing to put the gas on
or which to put the brakes on, but you get it.
- We're working it.
I mean, that's been the staff's fear all along
is that you're gonna have everything banged up
at the same time.
And we were trying to, it says it's 24, 25.
If we end up, it may on its own slow down, right?
Because it's a behemoth of a job.
- I guess I'm just putting a marker on it
that we see a traffic accident up ahead.
How do you adjust your driving now?
And you have, I think probably personally
made the 380 thing happen.
So I know that you can be very effective.
Oh, pardon me. - I think you did.
- As part of a team effort.
- Yeah, we're a team.
We're a good team.
- So I'm just underscoring this traffic accident
I see down the road.
- Yes, sir.
- Well, and to that end,
could you speak to the planning
of those final Bonnie Bray phases
and how that might interact with this project?
- It's in the report.
Can we get, you wanna do them now
or 'cause we're gonna get to them in a second.
- Oh, right, no, okay, that's fine.
- I get confused if I get out of order.
- Sorry.
- So, December 23, but as you know,
most projects don't meet their let dates.
Sometimes they slide.
So there's a good chance that gravity will take care of it.
All right, then in your 35 W main lanes,
again, we're not gonna talk about those today
'cause we're not intending to build them.
Once we got them cleared,
we moved into the Furniture Road project.
We are, let's see, HNTB has been hired
to do the design for this
and they've already started working on
or completed the IJR,
which is the Interstate Access Justification Report
and I'm certain that should be in the glossary if it's not.
And so the intent right now
is to do the northern half of the project from 407 North.
We are having some conversations
with some of the developments down there,
Hillwood in particular,
and they're wanting to expedite some of the infrastructure
and we haven't really figured out yet how to,
I'm sure there's a way to do it,
but they wanna be able to expedite it.
Of course, they wanna get paid back,
but we'll have to figure that out.
But the intent is 407 North on the Furniture Roads.
And we're shooting for that 24 let date.
- Thank you, Tom, excuse me.
I just wanna make sure you took my tone right.
No aspersion on you.
No aspersion on you even slightly.
- Yes, sir. - Yeah, okay, thanks.
- The US38377 project, again, it's under construction.
The Techstart report indicates that
they're currently working on the first phase of the project
and the shifts in traffic have gone well
and they are putting up the additional traffic control signs
for the narrow lanes and 50 mile an hour speed message board.
And again, this is the scenario where once they get
the shoring up of the abutments of the bridge structures,
they're gonna look at coming in with temporary barriers
across the lake bridges because these accidents
that are occurring are crossover accidents.
But as soon as the ordinances are passed,
the statutory signs will go up,
the advisory will come down and we'll go from there.
But it's still on track for November 23 completion.
US388, we're still essentially,
it's been awarded to the contractor,
but we're essentially still working on some utilities.
It has a delayed start.
Zachary was the low bidder.
It has a delayed start till December or January.
And so once we get that information,
we will change this to construction completion.
And we'll know it because they're saying
that their barricades, they're assuming
that there'll be about 36 months of barricades.
So they're thinking it's a three-year job,
which I can see that because the utilities alone are gonna,
even though they're supposed to be gone,
they're never always, ever always gone.
So we are in negotiations,
and we'll probably have the conversation today
at one o'clock with TechStat.
We are in negotiations with TechStat to pick up
the next phase of study on 380,
which is an environmental document.
I can tell you that Denton County is putting on there,
I think it's probably next Tuesday's court agenda,
an RFQ to begin the environmental clearance
on the outer loop, which is up there
on the northern part of the yellow box,
and the environmental for adding frontage roads
to loop 288 in that brown section.
So both in the cities and the county thoroughfare plan,
loop 288 in that segment is a freeway
functional classification,
consistent with what the 288 West is.
So what you have out there right now,
for all intent and purposes, are main lanes.
And what we're gonna do is clear the frontage roads.
We can come back in and put frontage roads.
So that quadrant, there's a lot of pressure
to develop that quadrant right now.
And with the frontage roads in place,
that'll allow that development to occur
without impacting the main lanes.
Loop 288 West, we have Ching Patel on contract now.
We still need to get a kickoff meeting
and it's just been a little bit difficult
because of some of the coordination with some of their subs,
but that kickoff meeting essentially is to sit down
with Ching Patel, TxDOT and the city of Denton staff,
and just find out, 'cause this is essentially,
what TxDOT wants to make sure is that they get this right
for the city, 'cause this is your development corridor.
And so they wanna make sure that what they're planning
on doing is consistent with what the city wants in that area.
But they are on contract by the county
and the same with 1515, they're on contract
and we are working to set up the pre-con on this one as well
and they'll also include the city.
That RFQ that's gonna have the outer loop
and 288 Northeast will also include the PSNE,
the plan specifications and estimates for FM 1173
and we put it on the street to select a firm
and it should be on the court's agenda next Tuesday,
I think, 'cause I submitted it last week.
So the county will be picking up the design
on this section of 1173.
Okay, on the Locus, I think the city and TxDOT coordinated
on the locations for the cores.
I think that went, I didn't hear anybody
say they broke anything, so I would say that went well.
So now they're going back and analyzing what's out there
and we'll be talking about it again today
at our one o'clock meeting
and I'm sure we'll provide you some additional information
on that in your Friday update based on that meeting
on where we are on this one.
And acronyms, okay, and then IJR.
(indistinct)
So condomation is a tool used under eminent domain.
(indistinct)
Yeah, yeah, that's what TxDOT uses those terms, yes ma'am.
- Sorry, what I was saying was in this document,
when you use the phrase eminent domain,
you're referring to parcels that are going
through the condemnation process.
- Yes ma'am, I do, I should probably amplify.
- That's kind of the common usage.
- Yes sir, I'm a stickler, no I'm not, okay.
I think I'm done and I was told to hurry up,
so I was gonna see if there was any questions
but I really don't mean it.
- No, no, that was about Bonnie Bray, to hurry that up.
- Oh, I thought it, I forgot it.
- I'm just kidding.
- This is the on system, I'm sorry.
- Yeah, no problem, I'm actually gonna ask Rachel
to come up and talk to you about Bonnie Bray
because her team is delivering the Bonnie Bray projects
and she can talk specifically about the phasing
in much more detailed information.
- I apologize, I'm gonna use my laptop
just because there's a lot to cover.
There are six, actually seven phases
if you count four and four be a Bonnie Bray.
So if it's okay with you, I'm just gonna kind of run
through each of the phases.
Some of the phases right now,
we're working on right of way acquisition
and I will note that right of way acquisition
has been extremely challenging,
particularly for Bonnie Bray phase six.
So some of these dates that I'm gonna give you
are very much preliminary estimates
based on how things are tracking right now.
So Bonnie Bray phase one from Roselon to Vintage,
that is actually nearing substantial completion.
The project will be completed
by the end of this calendar year.
We're working on punchless items
at this point for that phase.
Bonnie Bray phase two from Vintage to US 370,
I'm sorry, Vintage from US 377 to I-35 West.
This project is also going to be completed
by the end of this calendar year.
So making really great headway there.
We actually recently met Seth Garcia,
the project manager as well as our inspector,
met with several of the residents in the area,
walked through, talked about some of their concerns.
So making really great headway on that as well.
- Pardon me, Rachel. - Sure.
- You're probably aware and I would just have to just
track back and forth, which I'm happy to do,
but just how does it line up again with the work on--
- So we've got Bonnie Bray phases one, two, and three,
which are north of I-35,
and then the rest of the phases are gonna be,
I'm sorry, I said that the wrong way.
Phases one, two, and three are south of I-35,
and then phases four B through six are north of I-35.
And so they're all kind of, in a perfect world,
we wouldn't have had them synchronized the way they are,
but we needed to sync up, for example,
Bonnie Bray phase six with the opening
of Denton High School.
And we also had some funding considerations
that came into play where we needed to complete
certain segments before others.
And so they all are interrelated
and have different kind of spokes
in terms of how they interact with the I-35 project.
- Yeah, so at the end of the day,
where do we need to get to be ready for the I-35 in time?
And what's the key date?
- So as John mentioned, it is going to be very challenging
just because we're at different stages
for each of the phases of the Bonnie Bray project.
And so we are going to do our best.
We can certainly, as John mentioned,
the I-35 project obviously has the larger budget,
and it's something that we don't necessarily
have any control on the timing on.
We of course do have control on the timing
of our Bonnie Bray project.
Some of those phases do have regional funding
associated with them and federal funding.
So some of those phases do need to proceed
just because we need to make sure
that we're spending those federal and regional dollars.
- Pardon me, I wasn't really looking at the rationale
and I'm happy to, since this is a little bit in the future,
to just ask that, could we look at these items together
even though one's text on and one's local?
I mean, next time we look at them,
so we see holistically.
- Yeah, we can do a map for you if that's helpful
and kind of, and show the current timelines
that we're tracking on if that would be helpful.
Yeah, I apologize.
We will certainly have something prepared
for the next mobility committee meeting.
- You're doing awesome, just this is a new request.
But if I may, map is great.
Different people get information differently.
I'd kind of like to see the timeline
so I see, okay, does this one get done
before that one gets started?
I know John knows where I'm heading on this.
- Yeah, and we actually have a map
that we've shared before inside the actual report
that John puts together.
But we took it out of the packet that John puts together
because it's an off-system roadway instead of an on-system
and John's report is specifically on-system.
- Yeah, I get that.
- But all of the phases of Bonnie Bray,
we have a map that shows all those phases.
I will mention that the capital projects delivery team
is working very hard on getting phase one, two, and three
completed.
Phase six is the other phase that's currently in process
with design and we're running into some obstacles
related to condemnation.
And so that is some of the challenges
but we are syncing up with trying to make sure
that we get that portion completed
'cause it's going to be so important
for the high school in that area.
And then on phases four and five,
those are phases that we're currently working with John
as the county is mentioning
they're going to be having a bond election
because those are currently not fully funded projects.
So Rachel has all of the information
that can show you that we can,
if you're specifically mostly interested in anything north,
say near the textile location of their regional,
or I'm sorry, their district office
or local district office,
we can provide you a map that shows phase four, phase five.
As you know, there's a major water line project
going on in that area also
and kind of what the timing of those projects are
in coordination with the timing of the 35 project.
- Yeah, that's the key to me.
I'm more interested, frankly, in the timeline
rather than the map and looking at them together.
And ultimately, I just want to be able to understand
and be able to communicate to others
that this gets done,
this is necessary to get done before that
and it's, how tight is it?
Or are we missing or, that's the key to me.
- Yeah, and I will just tell you that, you know,
there could be opportunities where folks will need
to take alternate routes in this area
as construction's happening.
So, you know, thinking through that
and planning those things,
I think it's something that we definitely want to do
and be proactive to be able to explain
the construction situation.
But I will tell you, just like with Monterrey phase six,
it does have regional toll funding, as Rachel mentioned.
So that funding has to be spent
or we will lose funding.
So we will run ourselves into a situation
where more than likely the two areas
will be under construction at the same time.
So educating the traveling public
and making sure that they understand
there's alternate routes or alternate locations,
you know, will be something that we want
to be able to express.
- Yeah, and that's great.
And I need to, you know, we all need to be able
to communicate why this, like, kind of blatantly not,
you know, not very hard to explain things is occurring.
That seems, you know, it's not very intuitive
that we have to do it because the money's there.
Well, why isn't the money there when it should be there
instead of just when it happens to be there?
You know, why doesn't the needs of a community come first,
you know, rather than just some random reason
why the money is there at this time?
You know, that's hard for us.
You know, so the best we can understand it ourselves
and be able to communicate how long, what will be done,
you know, to compensate.
And ideally, the best we can do to influence the situation
to make it, you know, less ridiculous feeling
will be super helpful. - Yeah, and I think,
you know, TxDOT understands and knows
that they're not going to be working on
every single phase of 35 at the same time.
A lot of those things will happen with construction phasing.
We're currently working through a lot of that
with TxDOT right now.
And then we'll continue throughout the phase
of each one of those individual portions of the project.
So definitely understand and we get
the same questions you do, so we have to be able
to answer those same questions.
So we understand and we'll work to communicate that.
So it's been something that has been our goal
to try to not make happen, but unfortunately,
due to some of the condemnation situations
that we're currently in, it is causing a delay
to the phase six project.
- No, I think the horse is pretty dead now.
We've beaten it enough. - Okay, cool.
Well, we can move on, no problem.
Thank you, Rachel. - And we do have
a few other projects that are peripheral to Bonnie Bray
that we can list in there as well.
Windsor being a prime example.
I know we talked about that recently
during the Westgate presentation.
So want to make sure you're getting the context
of all of the streets that kind of spine off of Bonnie Bray
because there are, as you know,
we have several planned construction projects
that are going to be in close proximity
to the I-35 project.
So we can work on getting that package to you,
get you some dates, and then also get you that map
ready by our next mobility committee meeting.
- Thank you, Rachel.
- Have we finished the item then?
Anything else on that item?
No, we're all good.
Okay, thank you very much.
We'll move on to item C.
I can't wait.
Receive a report and hold the discussion
regarding updates from the Denton County Transportation
Authority, DCTA, and I think we'll probably hear
an introduction as well of a guest.
Morning, Gray.
- Well, good morning, and thank you for this opportunity
to address the mobility committee.
It's been a while, probably a year and a half at least
since we've been face-to-face,
at least a portion of our faces we can see.
So thank you for this opportunity.
Look forward to working with the mobility committee
and the council as we reshape transit.
And I really do appreciate all of the interest
and the dialogue about transit.
We are in unprecedented times with COVID,
certainly has impacted the economy and transit
and transportation nationwide, frankly worldwide.
And I see this as a great opportunity to reshape
the future of our communities, enhancing the livability,
improving air quality, and ultimately doing
what we're supposed to do with the tax dollars
that we receive from you, which is to improve mobility.
With me today, I'd like to introduce Ms. Brittany Farr.
She's our new director of government relations.
She comes from DART, has over eight years of experience
leading strategy and working with the 13 member cities,
stakeholder communities on all different aspects,
including social initiatives, mobility, on demand services,
and of course, the primary functions of DART,
which is trains and buses and the like.
So we're very, very happy that she chose to join DCTA
and she will be my backup and we will team
to make sure that we can bring important information,
have discussions with you as we move forward, so.
- Welcome.
- Thank you, Brittany.
Presentation, this looks like the end
of John Polster's presentation.
Hold on, let me just exit out of that one.
Okay, here we go.
Yeah, got it, thanks.
Excellent.
I see those DART skills right away.
- See that?
She just jumps in.
Yeah, absolutely.
So we request to provide an update on GoZone.
I'll walk you through where we are with GoZone,
spend a little time on fixed route,
talk about how the decision-making process
is gonna happen with the DCTA board
over the next two board meetings
and then we'll kind of talk about next steps.
So with regard to GoZone,
we launched the service on September 7th.
Ridership has continued to grow,
as you could expect with any new service
that you're implementing.
We will have bumps in the road.
We've had some of those.
I'm very confident that we're gonna continue
to move forward in a very positive direction,
but you can see some of the highlights of the ridership.
We are seeing ridership starting to eclipse daily ridership
on the fixed route bus.
I'll talk about that in a little bit more detail.
Average ridership.
We have seen a steady growth in new riders,
which is interesting to see.
As we continue to come forward,
you will see some very interesting heat maps
of how we're starting to see transit and riders
and where they're coming from.
And it's just, it's excellent data.
The visualization really helps to understand
how traffic patterns and people,
how they're moving about the area are changing.
You can see the ridership ratings.
We do have the ability with the service
to allow customers to provide feedback on the trip.
So typically in transit,
you would have to go out and do a survey,
hire somebody, get feedback.
This comes in literally every day.
So we get feedback on how customers feel about the service.
The average ride duration is under 13 minutes,
which is excellent.
And the average travel distance is roughly four miles.
Sorry about that.
On the connect side, we're starting to see
an increase in ridership.
Connect route service is challenging.
There's a lot of factors that go into
what's either causing an increase in ridership,
downturn in ridership.
As you were just hearing earlier
about the construction of Bonnie Bray as an example,
our fixed route buses, they're very large.
We have to plan specifically which routes
and which roads they can go down
'cause we can't just turn down any and every road.
So when there's construction on University
or Bonnie Bray or Hickory or any of these,
it creates a disruption and a challenge for our operators.
It also creates a disruption and challenge
for people that are trying to rely on the service.
And are expecting to get to school or their jobs.
And so it is a challenge.
Compound that issue with COVID with changes
in retail restaurants and a lot of others.
It does create a challenge for ridership.
Nevertheless, ridership is continuing to grow.
We did have to reduce service on three routes,
route four here in Denton, route 21 and 22 in Louisville.
That's predominantly because we have a shortage
of drivers, operators.
Now that shortage comes in a few flavors.
One is there's a national shortage, restaurants, retail,
it also affects transit.
This is not something that is unique or specific to DCTA.
All transit authorities are having challenges hiring people
in all different capacities.
But operators obviously are very important
because they're the ones that are out delivering the service.
We're about 15 operators on average short.
That means that if we don't have operators,
we can't pull the buses out, they're not operating.
It doesn't provide consistency or on time performance.
So add that on top of road closures
and you can imagine how challenging that is
to provide consistent quality service.
That has also been a challenge with a discussion
about how much longer we're gonna have fixed routes
around so as you can imagine, people do not like waiting
around to find out whether they're gonna have a job
tomorrow or not.
So we take all of these things and we're asking our provider
in TMC to try to hire at the same time
that we're talking about our routes going
to be eliminated or not.
So the DCTA board has shouldered a large burden
to try to understand what the future
of our mobility is going to be.
And that with all of those issues,
it obviously affects on time performance.
But I will also say that there's been a lot of questions
asked of me and of our board about how VIA
and our contractor is doing.
They're an exceptional partner.
They've owned the challenges that have come to them.
They were asked to deliver service in three cities
in a very short period of time.
And what we've delivered, in my opinion
as a professional transit leader,
what we've done is extraordinary.
It's not common to launch three cities simultaneously
and deliver service in a consistent manner.
So anytime you start up a new business,
you're gonna run into some challenges.
I will also say that we experience those same challenges
with rail and bus and we've been running those
for 10 years.
Every morning, when I wake up and our staff wake up,
we hope to deliver every ride, every expectation.
But the reality is, is when you're working
in a very dynamic environment,
we don't always meet those challenges.
And so every day it's a struggle.
When we hire new folks and especially in a university,
heavy university town, city,
you have a summer, fall, spring semester.
So not only do you have new students
that are having to learn how to use the system,
we also have operators that mark up for their jobs
and try to figure out what route they're gonna be on.
So we have folks on our bus system
that are learning new routes,
may not take the right street,
wind up having all kinds of challenges.
So not to make too much of that,
but I think it's important to ground the discussion
moving forward that it's not, in my professional opinion,
it's not that one is better than the other
or that one should be gotten rid of,
it's to build a vibrant city in partnership
with a transit agency, you need multiple modes of service
to provide the best solution for the city.
What's extraordinary about what's been done
is we've delivered on demand across two zones, three cities
that provide a tremendous amount of flexibility
for your citizens.
We've had citizens that have called in certainly
that have been upset because the ride may or may not
have been there, but we have that on our bus every day
as well, we have it with our rail every day.
But what I love is when we get compliments that come in
from people of all walks and ages saying how much they love
the new service.
So I'm looking forward to working with you
as a mobility committee, with the council
and the stakeholders to build the very best transit system
that we can, that we can all be proud of.
So I'm sharing with you some data, but bear in mind
that we've been at this for about five weeks.
Most transit professionals will tell you it takes six months
to a year for people to get accustomed to new routes.
When you have significant route changes in transit,
the expectation, the analysis and the planning recognizes
that you'll probably see a downturn in ridership,
not an upturn in ridership.
And we're actually seeing the inverse.
So it's very comforting to see the fruits of our labor
coming to fruition that we're seeing more riders
taking rides that they couldn't do on fixed route.
But we also have not seen the downturn,
a proportional downturn, we have seen a downturn
in fixed out ridership, but part of that is due to economics,
part of that is due to our on time performance,
part of that is due to staffing challenges.
And so the faster DCTA's board can preside
and render a direction for staff to follow
with regard to what level of service we're gonna provide.
I'm hopeful that it will be a combination of both.
I think the board has been very, not I think, I know,
the board has been very direct in saying,
look, we need to let the data tell us what the answer is.
My concern is we're gonna be looking at a few months of data
in only one time point of a fall semester,
and there's different cycles in every city.
So we also need to listen to each city, each council
to understand what it is that you're looking for
out of your transit system.
So that's my pitch to you to start out with
is that that's where I believe that we're heading.
So let me get to beyond fixed route
and get back to go zone 'cause that's what was asked of us.
So we launched a service, we launched it in three cities,
two zones, and the number of vehicles
that are in our contract is that they would have 25 vehicles
on average on a daily basis out in service.
We actually have the expectations
that we'll have 30 vehicles actually in service or available,
but 25 of them would be available every day.
We've had some issues with driver availability.
There's been some discussion about fleet capacity.
Do we have enough or do we not?
I think it's early to tell or to render an opinion on that.
I also think it will depend on how we shape
our transit system moving forward with or without fixed route
and how much via service do we actually need.
They've done a very good job in incenting drivers
to work, there's a combination.
So in this new way of delivering service,
you have a schedule just like we all would with a calendar
and drivers have the opportunity to decide
which pieces of work they wanna work,
which is a very flexible way of thinking
about how you deliver service
and how you actually make income.
I've had personally driven the service,
I've had many drivers say they really love the new service
because they can choose their work hours.
It's not Uber and Lyft,
they're not having to use their personal vehicle
and so there's a lot of advantages
of how the service is delivered,
but we have had some challenges.
We've had some customer service issues.
Via as a company, we've had conversations with our CEO
with their entire executive team,
they've been very responsive.
They've had people onsite doing retraining.
We do the same thing with our bus operators,
we constantly do retraining for them
because they're on different routes.
So every time there's a change,
somebody has something new that they're doing.
We have road supervisors that look at on-time performance,
they do as well.
So I think they've been very responsive.
They have not shied away from their responsibilities
in taking corrective action, but it's early.
We're not even two months into the service.
There's been some technology issues, again,
anytime you're setting something new up especially,
relies heavily on technology.
You have to customize, you have to configure.
This gets all the way down to a pin
where a virtual bus stop is,
if we have over 3000 bus stops,
or not stops, but virtual stops.
Sometimes you have to move that pin
to a more effective place because there may not be,
there may not be a sidewalk or the speed on that road
is maybe too high or it might actually be more convenient
if you actually move the pin 500 yards or so.
So we're gonna go through that
over the next several months.
And it's natural to get customers calling in.
I believe the last count I heard
was around 150 calls on average.
The call volume, I'm not too concerned about right now
because I would expect the call volume to go up
because people are learning how to use the system.
I would also expect the call volume to go up
because people are calling in to say,
it doesn't make sense where that stop is.
And that will go on for several months
as we refine the system.
We are getting calls about vehicle availability,
although I think that has been by and large addressed.
You're actually waiting longer for a bus right now
than you are for via.
Part of that is because we've had to reduce some service
or there's construction, things of that nature.
So I think we're making excellent progress.
And so where are we with the next steps?
Well, we're gonna continue to collect data.
We've been able to collect an aggregate
about six weeks of data.
We'll be meeting with the DCT board on October 28th.
We've teamed up with Accenture.
They know us inside and out.
They've gone through a visioning,
a basically an entire overhaul and analysis of DCT
over the last year and a half.
So they were instrumental in shaping our over,
I think it was 28 different initiatives in the agency.
They looked at all of our fixed routes.
They looked at what we were contemplating with on demand.
They've partnered with an excellent provider
that does a lot of transit planning.
And we've asked them to take a very unbiased look
at the data, to parse it out.
I've asked them to parse the data literally by hour,
by route, because I think that while there's been
a lot of dialogue with regard to, with this council
and with the mobility committee about 10 passengers per hour
and that being the gold standard.
Well, it's not the only standard.
There's multiple variables that need to be looked at.
And it's not necessarily for DCTA CEO to say
which variable is important because it's really important
to your communities to make sure that certainly
from an economics perspective, 10 passengers per hour
is a standard.
But there are probably hours in the day where we're close
or we're exceeding 10 passengers per hour.
And there's other parts of the day where we're not.
So by having multiple tools for us with the flexibility
of on demand and fixed route, we can reshape some
of the service to make it both efficient and effective.
But there's hours of the day where some of the routes
will make a lot of sense.
Route seven clearly meets the gold standard
of 10 passengers per hour.
We have others that are probably at six or seven,
but the routes are too long.
So if you go to any transit system in America,
if you're in downtown Manhattan and you get onto the subway,
it's gonna be packed.
But as you get further out from the city,
you have fewer people on that subway.
So the tentacles or the links at the end of some
of our routes may be too long.
They may need to be modified because now we have not only
first and last mile, which you hear a lot
of transit agencies talking about.
We have every mile covered predominantly.
So I think there's some discussions that we can have
with VA, with Accenture, with our own employees
to talk about how we could redefine some of the routes
to make them more effective in the city of Denton.
So that's my hope over the next several months
is as we parse through the data,
as the board looks at the DCTA board looks at the data,
that we're looking at it literally by time slice, by route.
There's clearly routes, as you've been told,
that don't meet that standard.
I recognize it don't meet the standard.
We were providing on demand before we got
into the contract with VA in areas.
And one strategy is to grow it slowly.
The other one is to blanket the entire city.
And I don't know that one is right or one is wrong.
This is just a different approach.
I think that where we are now, six weeks into it,
we have this incredible asset now that's delivering service,
but it's not the only asset we have.
We have fixed route and we have on demand.
The question now is how do we shape that
to build a multifaceted mobility strategy
that enhances your community,
your stakeholder community in many ways.
And it's not just fixed route, it's not just buses.
We have van pools, we have the trails.
We need to continue to work together on sidewalks,
on making sure that we're looking at things
like mobility hubs, where we can actually have
more effective fixed route engagement with on demand.
So I've been asked, are you an advocate for VA,
are you an advocate for fixed route?
I will tell you, I'm an advocate for enhanced mobility.
And when you look at thriving communities,
the dynamic communities, the ones that are able to attract
new and innovative companies,
they're looking for transit solutions.
And I believe that the tools that we have available to us
give us a better opportunity more than ever before
to help shape this community and add value
back to your stakeholders that entrust
your half-cent sales tax to DCTA.
And I'm very excited to continue to work with you
as we look forward and leverage both our on-demand
and our fixed route system.
So I may have one more, nope, that's it.
So those are the next steps.
We're gonna look at our data,
parse it out literally by hour of service
so we can look at where the majority
of the ridership is coming from on the routes.
I think that'll help us understand a little bit
or provide more clarity to the board.
And I don't think there's one board member
that has ultimately made up their mind one way or the other
about whether we're keeping fixed route
or we're modifying fixed route.
I think the entire board is committed to look at the data,
but we don't have that much data to look at yet.
So what we're going to do for our board
is we're collecting the data,
Accenture's working on it with our team.
We're parsing the data out for fixed route and on-demand.
On-demand data is a lot more,
it's easier to get to because a lot of it's automated.
Fixed route, we're having to sift through the data,
parse it out by hour,
and then build some dynamic ways for us to look at that.
And we will try to make some determination
and give our board of directors some recommendations
about what we might want to do with the service.
But I think our entire board is interested
in looking at the data on the 28th.
We will likely, between the 28th,
the board decided to combine
the November and December board meetings.
So our next board meeting would be December 2nd.
So we'll look at all the data
from that's been collected until that time.
We will likely send out a board update
with where, assuming on the 28th,
it'll be the first time that everybody's getting
to see the data and how it's actually shaped.
I haven't seen it myself, Accenture's still working on it.
But on the 28th, we'll look at it.
It'll give the board an opportunity to provide feedback
on what else they might want to look at.
That will give us some time in November.
We will likely give some updates during November,
not at a board meeting, but just sending out
in our weekly reports and updates to the board.
So they have as much information up to date as possible.
But bear in mind, at the December 2nd board meeting,
we'll likely have about two and a half months
of data to look at.
So my expectation is that it'll be fairly clear
that there's some fixed routes,
certainly that are not doing what we need to do.
I think there'll be dialogue about what do we do next.
So that's my briefing today,
and happy to answer any questions that you may have.
- I don't know if there's that much interest in this topic,
but we'll see if there's a question or two.
Go ahead.
- Oh, you know I've got questions.
And I look forward to having some more
in-depth conversations as well as I prepared
for this October 28th meeting.
I do want to go back to some of the data you showed us
on GoZone ridership and Connect ridership.
I obviously was watching the September last month's meeting
and there was some very preliminary but very detailed data.
So the GoZone numbers that you're showing us,
is that system-wide?
Is that in the Denton GoZone?
- It's system-wide.
- That is system-wide.
- We can break it out by city,
and we will likely be doing that
so that we can get very specific
about where the service is coming from.
- Great, and then same question about the Connect ridership.
Is that Louisville and Denton?
Is it just Denton Connect?
- It's total, but we have it by route,
which infers that we can do it by city as well.
- Okay, so that's system-wide.
And then, and that's monthly ridership?
Are those numbers that we're seeing?
- In this case, it's not monthly
because we've only had five weeks of data.
So it's comparison data literally during the time
from September 7th to October, it's basically a month.
- I mean, the Connect ridership that this--
- The Connect ridership, we have monthly ridership.
But we can also break that down again by route,
and that's what we'll do.
- Okay, cool.
So to your point about construction,
obviously this is an ongoing issue.
It's not gonna be over anytime soon, as we've just heard.
What do you think the city could be doing
to help DCTA be more agile
in adjusting to construction?
- Thank you for that question.
It's been challenging just to know
when a particular project is going to happen.
If we know in advance we can properly plan
around some of those things.
Unfortunately, once a fixed route is designed,
we go through the process of creating marketing material,
getting it out digitally now, which is much easier,
but people know where a particular stop is.
So they will walk to that particular site.
When there's construction, we may have to move the service
as much as a quarter of a mile in some cases
onto a thoroughfare that we can actually traverse.
So we literally have to bag or put notices
on those blades until such time
that we can get back onto that street.
It's not an easy solution.
The best solution that we have found is more coordination
and notice, advance notice,
of when streets are going to be closed.
Typically what happens, and this isn't always the case,
but we will find out when the road is actually closed,
and we have operators trying to figure out
how they're gonna get down the road,
and it's incredibly difficult, if not impossible,
to keep on time performance.
So I would say that's probably the biggest opportunity
is to make sure that there's better communication
and road closures.
We used to have somebody from DCTA that would come
and sit in some of the planning discussions with staff.
I think we just need to revisit that
and figure out how to make sure
that we're notified before.
Even if there's 72 hours of notification
that at least allows us to communicate.
We do have different ways to communicate
with our passengers as well when there's closures,
but the disruption can be fairly significant
in the last while, obviously,
when you're closing a large section of a road.
- So in those situations where you do receive
advance notice that a road is going to be closed,
how does that communication usually come?
Is it like an email?
Are you looking at the road closure report
in our staff reports?
How do you get that information?
- From various sources, it hasn't been consistent,
but we need to find somebody--
- We need to make a system.
- Pardon me?
- Oh, I was gonna say we need to develop a system.
- We need to develop a system where we're informed.
Trying to pay attention to every email or reports,
it can be tedious and we can certainly miss things.
And I'm not pointing a finger at anybody.
DCTA needs to be engaged in those discussions as well.
I don't see that as the city's responsibility to notify us.
It just takes collaboration 'cause we have to work together
to make sure that we're delivering that service.
Emails, weekly reports, anything that can help us understand
when a road closure is going to happen would be beneficial.
- Yeah, yeah, I think what I'm hearing is though
that we need to have like a standardized way
of communicating that's going to always be the same
and doesn't require digging for information.
- And then once we know when a road is closing,
even if it's 72 hours before,
our staff will usually work with a road supervisor
that knows the area, our safety manager,
and ensure that we find a safe route
that we can maneuver across.
Then we will reshape a map that'll improve
at least the understanding of where the route's
going to be picking up and dropping people off.
And then we have various ways to communicate
through social media, through most of our regular riders
sign up for notices, so we push out notices to folks
so they'll know.
- I signed up for those briefly
and then I just got flooded with so many emails
that I was like, okay, oh my gosh.
- Too many, too many notices.
- Okay, great.
So that's something that I will keep in mind for sure.
Can you tell me a little bit more about,
I mean, obviously when it comes to collecting
the GoZone data that's, it's in the app,
it's very easy to gather.
How is fixed route data collected?
I mean, are drivers clicking when somebody steps on the bus?
- So there's the good and the bad and the ugly of technology.
When you go down the technology road,
most transit authorities have
what they call smart fare boxes.
There's a few providers of those.
They're a fare collection device that has
some electronics on it and some buttons that you can push.
And so the operators, the most remedial way or manual way
is to have what's called a tally sheet,
which is a clipboard with a piece of paper
that identifies every stop
where somebody's gonna be picked up.
The most reliable way,
so you don't have to worry about technologies,
as long as you have a pencil or a pen,
you can say, okay, I picked up three people
or picked up four people.
So those data sheets, those manual data sheets,
they can get collected and somebody at NTMC
take those, depending on penmanship,
can be challenging to make sure you got the right people,
but you can also key in the wrong number of people as well.
So it's not that it's, I mean, obviously,
whether you're using technology,
there's still humans involved.
But it's a very manual process to collect
what's called tally sheets that show
when people were getting picked up.
You then take that data, you enter it into a spreadsheet
by route, then you're able to look at it,
not only by route, but each one of those sheets
will tell you which run it was actually on,
so you know the time of day.
So it's a very manual process.
With a smart fare box, which are very expensive,
and you could probably talk to many CFOs around the country
and there's a love-hate relationship with them
because they're expensive,
they take a lot of maintenance,
but they do help you with data collection.
So today we do that manually.
- Okay, so DCTA does not have smart fare boxes.
- We do not have smart fare boxes.
- So fixed route drivers are collecting data
manually with pencil and paper.
- Correct, and then we can validate that
and typically what Transit does,
even with, so there's several different ways.
There's a fare box, there's also automatic passenger counters
that you can install in the doorways.
Those have been validated for years.
They're accepted by the federal government
as a way to collect ridership,
but you have to do validation
and typically that's a manual validation
where you have somebody ride
and they do statistical sampling and they validate that
or compare that to both manual and automated ways.
So there's camera systems, there's infrared,
there's a lot of different ways to collect passenger data,
but it costs money and it's an investment.
And so it's something that we have to look at.
With UNT, because there's so much ridership
and they do subsidize a lot of the service,
I would venture a guess if you asked UNT,
they'd love to know the exact ridership,
but that's not as important to them
as making sure that the students are getting picked up
and dropped off where they need to.
So they're not necessarily,
or they haven't been interested in subsidizing,
putting technology on the vehicles to capture that.
Because we provide service to UNT,
we also rotate our fleet.
So if we're gonna do something for connect service
and we're rotating our fleet,
we need to make sure that we have technology
on all vehicles, whether they're on UNT
or they're in the connect service,
'cause they are considered public routes,
even though they're subsidized by the university.
- For fixed route riders and A-train riders,
how many of those folks would you say use the GoPass app
to purchase their tickets?
- Ask your question again for A-train and for fixed route.
- Yeah, so I mean, I'm not a regular user
because neither fixed routes nor the GoZone
serve the area where I live.
But when I do use it, I use the app.
- Correct.
- Is that pretty common?
- So I would say it's very popular on the A-train service.
Probably larger majority would be using the GoPass app.
They can buy that through Dark Tree Metro or DCTA,
depending on where they're coming from.
That GoPass is actually used as a transfer as well.
So the majority of the people that are coming to
or coming from, going to,
that are connecting to the A-train
have a tendency to be using the app.
I don't know the--
- I've used it for that as well.
- Yeah, I don't know the breakdown.
We can certainly follow up on how many,
what percentage that is on fixed route.
I know that can be challenging
because when you buy a day pass,
transfers are included in that
and we don't have an electronic,
today we don't have an electronic method
to track when that transfer happens
or what bus they're getting onto.
So I would, my guess is that if our CFO is listening,
she's probably biting her nails saying,
"Please don't say you can get that data."
'Cause I don't know that we have
that data readily available.
- Okay.
- We do have a project on our books
to look at automated fare payment.
A lot before we make that decision,
I think it's important to understand
what our multimodal approach is going to be.
Certainly we have a lot more rich data
because you're using an app on via.
We do have an interest in automating
the fare collection, passenger counting,
and we can do that by installing some technology
on the buses.
We just need to kind of understand
what that looks like, okay?
- Okay, yeah, that's very helpful.
Thank you.
That's exactly the information I was looking for.
- You're welcome.
- Council Member Wood. - Thank you.
Yeah, I have a, I'm gonna go back to the GoZone update
and I'll spend a little bit more time
talking about the startup issues.
Just some clarifications on driver vehicle availability.
Increase fleet capacity.
Talk to me a little bit more about
the challenges of increasing the fleet capacity.
You know what, I wanna step back.
I do want to step back on the length of time for the data.
And what's really interesting
is that you noted something about us needing
at least about six months to get a good feel
for where we're going with this.
And I do recognize that the holidays are coming up.
Students are gonna be doing whatever it is that they do.
People are gonna be going out of town,
visiting family members and all of that.
So I appreciate you saying that.
I think that when we were here
and making a decision to ask for at least a six-month study,
that was one of the reasons why.
So I appreciate you confirming that for us
that we really need some time.
Right now, it's about six weeks
and it just sounds like we still need a little bit more time
to kind of figure out what we're doing.
So I just wanna put that out there for the sake
of acknowledging that.
- Well, let me, if you don't mind,
I'd like to clarify that the,
transit recognizes that when you're making
significant changes that human behavior travel patterns
take about six months to change.
Look, we all go on diet programs first of the year.
We're all saying we're gonna do something.
We all know that it takes consistent reinforcement
and confidence in what we're doing.
And that can wane if you don't have a good experience.
It doesn't mean that somebody may not try it again.
And so I will say that that's kind of the rule of thumb
in transit.
The data is a different subject, right?
The data, if we know, as an example,
that even before VIA, we had some routes
that either needed to be changed
or they're just not carrying enough people.
It's our responsibility as a transit agency
to look at the lower performing routes.
It's usually in every, and we have it as well.
You look at the 10% lowest performing routes,
you bring it back to your board and we say,
look, these are not performing.
They're not meeting the,
it's not just financial indicators.
There's a lot of other indicators that we look at.
Some of them are social, some of them are,
we wanna make sure that we're meeting the goals
that are set forth for the transit agency's
performance responsibility.
And if they don't meet them,
then typically what happens is you come back to your board
and say, we're recommending, fill in the blank.
It could be, we're recommending modifying it.
We're recommending, ultimately,
you could recommend elimination of a route.
But before you eliminate a route,
you make other recommendations
about how you might be able to increase
the performance of the route.
So those are, there's a nuance and a subtlety there
that I think are important to understand.
And so I think what I've heard
from some of our board members
is we know what the historical data has been.
We know what it's looking like
over likely the first two and a half, three months.
And if that data doesn't change,
then what do we do next?
And I think that's the openness that our board has
is to what do we do next?
Do we modify the route?
Or do we eliminate the route?
Or do we leave the route as is
because it's doing a good job?
So I just wanna make sure
that I was clear in my message to you.
- So when you are taking a look at the data,
the next question is how often is that done?
I mean, is this gonna be twice a year or once a year
or every six weeks that you wanna take a look at that data?
And I was just noting, prior to this,
is that that's what stood out to me,
is that you need more time to address
whatever issue it is that you're starting to recognize.
So like you noted, that it takes time
to get your exercise program
where you can start seeing results.
But in this particular case, not to rehash anything,
but it was just an opportunity for us to go through
certain things with this board.
We were concerned about the fall semester, if nothing else,
what happens here in this city as a college town,
as opposed to those other cities,
those are not college towns.
So there's a lot of dynamics that are different here
than anywhere else.
And the idea of extending that time.
So the question now becomes,
when is the next time you're going to look at the data?
Is it every six months process?
Is it once a year?
- Thank you for your question.
- How should we expect to do that?
- We provide monthly ridership reports to the board.
So they're seeing every month how ridership is trending.
Certainly we have board members that are asking
for more real-time information.
So we have been producing reports
the best of our ability every week.
If we can on via, we've been doing it more often than that
because the data is more available.
Now, we also have to be appreciative of staff time
because if they're constantly providing
real-time information, they're not able to necessarily
do their regular job and prepare the board
'cause we have, just like you do,
a monthly cycle, weekly cycles.
So I wanna be respectful of people's time
and make sure that right now it's very important
that we're giving as much information as we can.
I highly doubt that the board would be making decisions
on a daily or weekly basis.
They're gonna look at hopefully trends.
And what makes it challenging for a,
specifically for the city of Denton,
is you have two major universities
that create a tremendous amount of density
in the fall and in the spring.
In the summer, they still have people on campus
that are taking summer classes
and they want us to continue to provide service.
And by the way, those people don't necessarily live
just on campus, they live throughout your communities.
So we have this double hump when you look at ridership.
You have this significant hump during the spring
and the fall semesters, and then it's kind of
a bathtub effect in the summertime.
So I really do appreciate the board,
all board members of DCTA saying,
look, we can't make a decision over two weeks.
We can likely make a decision during a full fall semester
because that really shows, those three months show
the kind of the maximum pressure, if you would,
on the system.
The nuance there is, yes, I agree with that.
But this is also the first time
that we're launching a new service.
And human behavior, just getting used
to the different systems and,
well, I can use fixed route for this.
But after a certain period of time,
it's gonna be a lot more beneficial to me to use on demand.
And that's the beauty of what most transit authorities
are trying to accomplish is a multimodal solution
for the city.
I think this council intuitively, in past sessions,
had said, well, I think it was you Councilman Meltzer
that said that there's probably gonna be
a self-selection process that happens
depending on the type of ride that you need.
It's not necessarily that, oh, I'm all VR,
I'm all fixed route, it's I have different modes
of transit that I've never had available to me.
And that's exciting, it's really exciting.
So I hope I answered your question.
- You did, you did, thank you very much.
You know, I'm looking forward to all of those updates.
Driver availability, vehicle availability.
There are hubs where the drivers leave the vehicles.
- Yes.
- And so each city, how many hubs are in Denver?
- Well, so there's two major hubs.
There's one in the Louisville,
one of our stations at Hebron,
and then Med Park is the other hub.
So that's where the vehicles sleep at night.
When a driver signs up for a piece of work,
they'll go to that station,
they'll unlock the vehicle.
It's a pretty cool technology that you use your phone
and they'll unlock the vehicle.
- Okay.
- Well, that's been part of the problem
is that unlock feature.
Again, brand new vehicles are getting them in here,
they're hurrying up, they're trying to get it all working,
and they get them all installed.
And when you're doing that very quickly,
and some of them may or may not work
exactly the way you want.
So some operators, it's not necessarily
that we don't have enough drivers,
it's just that in some cases the drivers
couldn't get in to the vehicle due to mechanical issues.
So they resolve those pretty quick.
So driver availability, vehicle availability,
both of those are impacted by,
it can be a human error, it can be a mechanical error.
We have the same thing every morning at our bus depot.
Did somebody show up?
No, oh, we need to get somebody from our extra board.
Hey, I tried to start the vehicle
and tried to cycle the wheelchair left and it didn't work.
Okay, well, I need to assign you another bus.
So it's not dissimilar with the mechanical issues,
with driver availability issues.
And I think that's some of what's been reported,
but I wanna make sure that there's context
because we have that with rail, with bus, with via.
- Okay. - Okay.
- Driver incentives, pay increases,
have we, how does that, how is that gonna work?
Oh, here's a question.
Are drivers allowed to take tips?
- I don't, I don't believe so.
- Okay.
- I'll have to look back at the contract.
I don't believe that we're, they're able to accept tips.
- Okay.
Because I-- - I'll follow up
with you on that.
- All right, and I'm just connecting that
with part of the incentives.
If you are having driver shortages,
and just, I'm kinda relating it to as though,
you know, this is a waiter of some sort.
You know, the pay may not be,
I don't know what the pay is, just put that.
Pay may not be something that is sustainable for them.
And, you know, would it be problematic
if we find that there are some are accepting tips or not?
So I don't know what your--
- Well, I would say that that's,
that's part of our contractor's model.
I mean, let me restate that, that didn't sound right.
It's not part of their model.
I'm saying that the contractor's responsibility
to deliver service to the agency,
how they pay their employees.
We've had discussions before.
We would be overreaching if we told them
how to pay their employees.
- Okay.
- I believe that, I'm gonna make a two-step statement here.
On an hourly basis, it appears that their pay is competitive.
It's up to the operator, to the driver
to decide how many hours a day they wanna work.
- Okay.
- In this, it's been coined the gig economy.
Just because I'm inherently in the business of transit,
no matter where I go around the country, around the world,
I've always asked the question of the operator,
"Hey, do you enjoy your job?"
And a lot of the Lyft and Uber drivers say they love it.
Not everybody loves everything, right?
But the majority of them say they really like
the flexibility 'cause they can set their own hours.
They can decide when they're working,
what days of the week they're working,
and they're kind of their own boss.
Well, we're not Uber and Lyft, and V is not Uber and Lyft.
I've asked the same questions of every operator
that I've been in the vehicle with,
which has been quite a few.
And I've heard a few comments about,
well, the technology is, 'cause there are anybody,
if you're an Apple person,
you don't like, you know, Samsung or whatever.
I happen to be a Samsung user, I don't, don't,
and so people will tend to provide
an opinion about something.
I would say the majority of the time, most of the time,
the operators have been complimentary
of the hours that they work.
They like the fact that they're not driving their own vehicle,
they're not using their own gas,
they like the comfort of knowing
what they're going to make when they're working,
and they like the flexibility
of being able to set their own schedule.
So there's some advantages to the people
that are delivering service on our behalf.
But I think it'll, you'll typically see
the contractor hire more people
than are what are required to operate
so that they can, because they know
that they're going to self-select,
there's gonna be days when they wanna work
and when they don't wanna work.
So you'll have a much larger employee pool
from the contractor that will decide
when they're going to work.
- I just think that it's interesting how
that system works, if you're not,
if you're saying you're not like Lyft
and you're not like Uber,
but you're kind of giving the drivers
the same kind of respect for picking
and choosing their days.
If I were a driver, I certainly wouldn't wanna work
on Mondays and Fridays, you know?
- Some do. - And some do, some don't,
but is that affecting this process
of picking people up on time and doing things,
you know, in that manner?
So, I can't tell the--
- That's why the data's important.
- You know, how to do all of that,
but I'm just stating the obvious,
that if you're saying that you're having
vehicle, driver availability and vehicle availability,
I think that DCTA could put a bit more pressure
on this particular company to make sure
that the drivers are there.
- Well, and you make an excellent point,
and I wanna say that this,
what's being presented to be fully transparent,
it wouldn't be transparent to me,
for me to come and say, we've had no issues,
because it's obvious, we hear from customers,
we've had customer complaints that there's been issues.
They have resolved many, if not most of the issues
around driver availability, vehicle availability.
They have vehicles available, they have operators available.
The average wait times are well within
what we expected in the contract.
The distance that we expected is within
what we expected in the contract.
We're continuing to see growth, which is fantastic.
But it wouldn't be fair to say
that we didn't have startup issues.
So, I think it's important that we say
that the contractor is actually doing a good job
of being those responsibilities
and doing what's expected in the contract.
If they decide to provide an incentive on a particular day
to operate, to get more operators there,
then we need to allow them to do that.
We're paying a fixed cost per hour to them,
and it's their responsibility, their business model,
to figure out how to get vehicles and operators
to deliver on time and with courtesy.
And as the owner of that contract, DCTA,
we have a responsibility to manage that contractor
to the requirements of the contract.
But I can't and would not tell them what to pay
or where they decide to allow them to accept tips.
It's a conversation that we're going to have,
I'm sure, in the future.
I think originally, Uber and Live didn't allow it.
At some point, they did.
I hope that answers your question.
- If you do answer my question,
I'm just gonna leave that right there,
my comments and questions, and thank you so much.
I appreciate it. - You're welcome.
- Ray, I have a few questions for you as well.
- Sure.
- It looks like, clearly, the cumulative ridership
between Connect and On Demand is up.
- It's growing. - They're both up.
So the cumulative ridership is up.
Do we have any way to track whether GoZone riders
are new people that didn't used to use public transit?
Or are they switchers from bus
and there just happens to be kind of growth overall?
Or are they, you referred before to the idea of people
who would mix and match based on their need at the time?
Do we have any kind of qualitative insight
into the ridership basis?
- We don't track users for privacy reasons.
We don't track users.
- Well, I would suggest that that's an almost essential
piece of consumer research to do,
whether you do it quantitatively through tracking.
- Yes, specific users, we don't.
What I was going to follow up with is,
when you look at the origins and the destinations,
when you look at this heat map,
if you overlay, which we can and have,
when you overlay the fixed route service,
it becomes very apparent because you will see riders
along a fixed route within a quarter of a mile
and we have ways to kind of show
like how far people are assuming the riders went.
But then you look at all the dots of the pickups
and drop-offs across the zone,
it's obvious because we didn't have service.
We couldn't get to that particular neighborhood.
- Those are incremental rides.
- So you're gonna see riders
in all four corners of the zones.
Well, we don't have fixed route service
at all four corners of the zone.
So it's a very apparent way of aggregating data
and saying, wow, look at all these new rides
that we've not had before.
And that's true of not only our fixed route,
but also the university shuttles.
You will see a large number of folks,
a lot of those dots in and around the peripheries
of the university along Colorado Express down by the mall.
Well, why down there?
Well, there's a lot of housing and student housing
or students that live in apartment complexes
in and around Met Park.
And you can see a lot of dots around the mall
and the retail establishments, which is fantastic
'cause that means that people are using it
to instead of a car, instead of a bicycle
or whatever other mode of transit walking.
But there are a lot of pick up and drop offs
all over Denton, which is exciting.
- I think there's a bit of a Venn diagram challenge
where clearly new territory, you're creating new rides
that didn't exist before and that's complimentary.
I think that where it becomes more important
to understand the characteristics of the ridership
is where you have the overlap in the Venn diagram.
And unless you understand whether they're new riders
or not, you don't know how incremental
and how much displacement is there.
On the surface, I think, especially based on
what you're talking about with the geography of the rides,
it seems so you can only conclude that it's at least,
to a large extent, complimentary, not a substitute.
So when that's the dynamic, if you take away one,
it doesn't all go over to the other, you just lose 'em.
So to put it more positively, you're doing the awesome thing
of growing total ridership.
So you don't take one thing away and then expect--
- Yeah, there's certainly, there's an economic factor.
Can we afford both and are they sustainable?
And I would say, likely, and to keep both the way they are
is not financially sustainable.
It doesn't necessarily mean-- - You have to adjust them.
- You have to adjust them, yes.
- So I'd be more than happy to refer you
to these consumer research companies.
I'm sure your consultants know zillions of 'em
who might help get insight into that.
Just to see, really, where is the value to maximize?
Couple of other questions.
- Well, before we get off of that one,
I wanna make sure that I'm not speaking
on behalf of the board.
I'm speaking as a transit professional
on what I would expect to see.
I have not seen enough of the detailed data from Accenture
and how it's gonna be presented to the board.
I'm very excited, all of us are anxious to see it
so that we can start going, wow, here's the big reveal.
What are we seeing?
In aggregate, we're seeing some drop-off on fixed route.
I explained earlier why, it's multi-faceted reasons.
But it's not a one-to-one correlation of,
oh, we're having 1,200 rides over here,
we've lost 1,200 rides over there.
There's still people using the fixed route system.
Until you can kind of track users longitudinally,
you don't know if you lost them because
street construction, blah, blah, blah, inconvenience,
intrinsic losses that you might have had anyway
or if they converted.
I don't understand how you could make decisions
without understanding that.
I think Accenture probably has all the skills
to say, how would we get that data?
I mean, I'm just encouraging that.
I think it'll be super eye-opening.
- Interject on that point.
I recognize that there are privacy issues
with tracking individual users, but--
- Tracking is different than consumer research.
- Yeah, but I mean, technology can anonymize that data
and protect privacy while still gathering data.
- And we're doing that.
We're getting enough, in my opinion,
we're getting enough randomized data
not specific to any individual.
I believe the type of data sets
that we're going to be looking at,
one could make decisions from that data.
- That'd be awesome.
Couple of other questions.
What do you think about the idea of route changes,
proposed route changes, once the case is kind of constructed,
coming as part of the process,
coming to individual cities for input and direction
and have that be part of what goes to the board?
We have a lot of advisory bodies
that we hear from before we make our final decisions,
and here we have a mobility committee.
- Sure.
Part of the public engagement process for transit does that.
We do it through a open process where,
so we break it up in really two primary categories
in transit, major route changes
where you're going to impact more than 25% of the route,
or you're going to create a new route.
And we will go through a public process
where we literally engage with the community.
We have very multifaceted approach
to gate online.
We go to libraries, we'll go pre-COVID,
we'll hold a lot of community meetings.
In my three years, one of the things was for me
that was incredibly important
was that we create a social services round table process
where we meet quarterly with many of the social services
throughout Denton and Lewisville.
And it's very collaborative.
So we use that process to learn about our services,
how we can modify services.
We also have a citizens advisory committee
that allows individuals to sign up to be,
if they're advocates or passionate about transit
to provide feedback on all kinds of things,
including accessibility.
And part of that process can include presenting
just like we would if asked to present the budget,
we can certainly get feedback from cities and the councils.
Ultimately, I report to the Board of Directors of DCTA,
the Board of Directors are the ones that vote.
So I love the fact that there's a lot of interest
more than there probably has been in a decade.
- You're suddenly super popular.
- It's very popular.
- And important, I do believe transited.
When you look at the top 10,
I reached out to Governor Abbott's economic development group
and we've talked about the top 10 factors
that are driving companies to relocate to Texas
and ultimately our region and transits in those top 10,
there's no question.
So having a vibrant city with accessible transit
is absolutely a reason that companies would locate here
and it's an important asset to have.
So the more engagement that we have,
I'm certainly an advocate of that.
I think the more feedback that we have,
ultimately your sales tax come into DCTA
and I've always squarely made the focus of what we do
to add value back to our stakeholder communities.
And we do that through our four pillars,
which is improving mobility, enhancing air quality,
doing our job to look at ways of doing that,
improving the livability for your citizens
and being a good partner with regard to economic mobility
and economic development, excuse me.
And we do that through transit oriented development projects
there's a lot of work and discussion we need to have
around the train stations 'cause there's a lot of land,
DCTA can be a great partner.
We helped quite a bit in the dialogue for a developer
to actually acquire land around the DDTC.
And I know there's a lot of interest
in what do we do with that.
So there's a lot of value creation that can come,
we can be a great partner to you
because we can compete for federal dollars
if we work together and we compete to get federal dollars
that could be as much as 80.20, so 80 cents on the dollar.
But I wanna do that.
I wanna work through your board appointee
and with this council to talk about that,
how we make Denton more livable,
more competitive on a national level.
And more than ever before this agency is more accessible
it's more engaged regionally.
What we've done has piqued the interest nationally
of a lot of folks that are in transit.
So I think our future is bright
and I really look forward to continuing this relationship
and this dialogue and hope that you stay engaged
at this level in transit, thank you.
- Keep you standing a little longer,
I have a couple of other areas I wanna explore.
I appreciate your coming here.
Our interest is intense, it's been lively topic
and it is, as you alluded, it's all synergistic
with economic development, with our environmental impacts,
so we have lots of reasons to care.
Specifically, you brought up air quality.
What are the prospects for with VIA
toward moving toward an electric fleet?
The problem when you're displacing individual car rides
with VIA is somebody's gonna drive to the pickup point
and then after they drop them off
they're gonna drive somewhere else,
so you're actually, on the margin,
some studies showed negatively impacting the environment,
but if you're replacing internal combustion
with electric, that's a plus.
So what's your sense of the prospects there
for ending up with an electric fleet?
- It's something that we certainly need as a board
to have dialogue with staff.
I'm looking forward to having a strategic discussion
with the board of what are the top priorities.
It's one that I've already talked to,
we'll likely have Accenture lead our strategic workshop,
but it is a topic that will be brought forth.
The challenge is understanding the dynamics of our fleet
and what it's gonna look like in the future,
so you can probably appreciate-- - I meant their fleet
as well, I know when you say our fleet,
I was talking about VIA, but--
- Well, so I'm gonna say our fleet and VIA's fleet,
so the good news is that VIA does have the ability,
they do have a sustainability strategy,
so they have access to electric vehicles.
That implies that we need electric infrastructure,
charge stations, how does that work, where are they?
As you can imagine, that infrastructure
can be very expensive and probably that's the biggest
head scratcher for a transit system of our size
is does it, from the economics perspective,
does it, certainly there's folks that would love
to sell us electric vehicles and bundle all that in
to a supply of energy and you look at that
over the lifetime of the vehicle,
so it's getting a lot easier to just find somebody
who'll bundle all that up and sell it to you.
You have to look beyond that and say, is that sustainable?
And in order, the sustainability of an electric fleet
and what does that look like?
So we can certainly buy electric buses.
There's questions across the industry as to the scalability
of converting all of your fleet to electric,
as you can imagine, to energize an entire fleet
could take a small substation to do.
And there's in lies the question is, is it economical to do?
So a lot of transit agencies have gone
and they've purchased 10, 12, 20 of them,
but getting beyond that is a challenge.
I very much want to look at our fleet
and starting this year and see if we can,
whether it be via or DCTA, not only look at electric,
but also hydrogen is starting to become a big issue.
I mean, you can't pick up a paper
without reading something about hydrogen.
- So there are transit agencies that have been
in the bus business building now electric,
probably third, fourth generation electric vehicles
that are also starting to talk about,
well, what about a hydrogen platform?
'Cause it's basically the same platform.
It still needs a battery, but now they have hydrogen
that it's kind of a hybrid solution.
So yes, very much.
We need to take a look at from a sustainability perspective.
I'm excited about looking at that.
I also want to make sure that we were in
third or fourth generation technology.
Your bigger transit properties can afford to get involved
in that and they have a larger maintenance team.
The last thing I want to do is put the burden
of having two completely different technology platforms
that a small maintenance team has to address.
- Yeah, let me put something on your radar
and then I have one more topic after this.
And this is why it's great that we're in better dialogue.
City of Denton just established a sustainability fund
that is basically fueled by our core scientific deal,
but there'll be probably other data centers in the future
and more opportunities to fund the sustainability fund.
It's the task of the Sustainability Framework
Advisory Committee to develop a work plan
and figure out what are the projects
that would have the most sustainability impact.
And I'm agnostic and I'm certainly open to the possibility
that what you're describing supporting
electric or hydrogen infrastructure for public transit
that may end up high on the list.
I mean that needs to be evaluated.
So I just kind of put that out there.
- You have some great resources.
I mean, Landfill develops methane.
It used to be considered a nuisance
and now it's actually, methane is easily convertible
to hydrogen, green hydrogen as it's called in the industry.
So you have blue and green, right?
Blue is generated from natural gas.
Green, which is everybody's desire
is to use sustainable forms of gas
to convert it over to hydrogen
and one of the prevailing ideas
is to use your landfill gas to convert to hydrogen.
And then hydrogen can be converted to electric power.
I mean, there's all kinds of very interesting,
exciting things coming in the future.
- Okay.
- So we currently are undertaking
a multimillion dollar project to collect methane
from the landfill and sell it to Atmos
and put it into a pipeline.
Would that preclude what you're talking about?
- It just depends on the agreements
and the way they're structured.
I don't know they would preclude it.
It's just, where's the source coming from?
A lot of landfills will sell their methane.
Either they'll convert it on property
and literally put it into the grid
or they'll sell it to Atmos or someone else
and then they'll use the gas just like anyone else would.
So a source could literally be, a green source,
sustainable source would be landfill gas.
Another source, which is considered blue,
would be literally using the gas
coming from the Atmos pipeline.
But if their supply is actually methane from a landfill,
then you meet the same end result.
I don't think that it would preclude,
if we were to decide to do something together,
even if it was in the hydrogen.
Electric is 10 times easier to do
'cause it's already available.
Hydrogen is a few years down the road.
But as you start talking about sustainability
and being a leader, there's no doubt even
at a federal level that there's a lot more discussion
about making sure that there's parity
between electrification and hydrogen projects.
The rest of the world, I'll say,
there's other portions of the world
that are further down the road with regard to hydrogen.
But we shouldn't exclude either one of those.
- Yeah, I would just say that electric exists
and if we can find a way to, who knows?
Charging stations may also be part
of what might make sense to fund.
And if we get you on electric from our resources,
it's gonna be sourced from renewables
in the first place and then you have the emissions benefit.
I promised I have only one more topic,
so I'll just get to that one.
And I really appreciate your patience
and talking with us today.
On the topic of pay, we're interested
in the economic development impacts,
environmental impacts, and we care about the impacts
on the drivers themselves and on that impact
on our local economy.
So I just really wanna probe a little bit,
why is it beyond the pale to have a term
of your agreement to be that the drivers make what they make,
not based on what vehicle they drive?
In other words, why is pay equity
beyond the pale for a contract?
And obviously, I would expect that would cost more.
I mean, I'm not saying VIA must make less,
but why is that not available to evaluate
if we're interested in the impact
on drivers and on local economy?
- Are you speaking specifically about--
- VIA. - VIA.
- Yeah, or however we end up doing microtransit.
- I don't think it's common practice
to dictate to a corporation what they should pay
their employees.
I just don't think that that's common.
I might not be understanding specifically.
- No, no, I think you are understanding.
Just like, I mean, I don't personally feel compelled
by only doing what's common.
If it's a value to us and there's a mutual agreement
at arm's length, you know, I kind of think
like anything's negotiable.
So, and that's really my question.
Not common, but if the board were to determine
that that was a value, is it not achievable?
- The challenge, especially with the dynamics
of a particular company is if we say we want you to pay
for, you know, let's say a particular range,
they can build that into their model.
If that means that it's gonna cost us more,
so be it, it might cost us more.
I get concerned.
- And then that's a business decision, right?
Back to that.
- It's a business decision, but I also get concerned
about providing callers and contracts.
So one of the dynamic things that they can do is,
as I mentioned before, and this is common practice
even for Uber and Lyft, they do surge pricing
on customers, but they can also surge, incentivize
their employees, if they need to, to work certain hours
that we're having a challenge filling
because it's late at night or it's in the middle of the day
or whatever, and if somebody can make more money
doing something, maybe that entices them.
And I think looking at one or two variables
in a corporate infrastructure as a public entity
and saying we want you to address this,
it's like macro microeconomics is you're looking
at one variable, but there's multiple variables
in their business model that makes sense for them.
I'm not saying that we couldn't do it.
It's something that could be broached with the board.
- Yeah, no, it's all depends on is that a value
that the board prioritizes?
- And we did, I believe it was one of the meetings.
I don't think it's important which one,
but there was some initial dialogue about that
at the board level, I don't think we felt at that point
that it warranted us going back and amending our contract.
I will say it's important that we pay competitively.
I say we were contracted with NTMC to provide services.
They just did their own analysis.
And we're not significantly out of round,
we're probably 50 cents or less than a dollar on wage
in comparison to training Metro and Dart.
And there's variability in the scale.
But I think for, if you, we heard directly
at the NTMC board meeting from the president
of the management team that is responsible
for managing the staff, that he felt that building
a more, a better culture, a great place to work
where people take pride in the work that they do,
that they have comfort, that they're coming to a job
that they can rely on is more important most times
than 25 cents or 50 cents an hour.
So I think if we can focus on that, stay competitive,
but we're not in training Metro's area or Dart.
So while we're all competing for folks,
the economics are a little bit different here in Denton
than they are in training Metro, but not enough
that it would warrant a significant pay differential.
So we're looking at pay to make sure,
look, people vote with their feet.
If they can make more working somewhere else,
they're gonna go somewhere else.
And even though we look at wages every three years
with the ATU, if it makes sense,
if we're losing too many people, we can't retain staff.
We're obviously not being competitive.
So that needs to be looked at.
- Let me just give you a better insight
into where I'm coming from
and then I'm happy to leave it at that.
We get all kinds of pressure from the public
and a lot of it's been based around this idea
that what kind of services provided should be driven
by whether they're unionized or not.
And I think that what kind of services that are provided
should be based on what meets ridership needs
and maximizes our service to the population.
And if we can take that issue out of it,
that what you make doesn't depend on what you drive for us.
You know, it kind of takes a false pressure
out of the equation.
That's the genesis of what I think.
- Thank you for that clarification.
So we have two pay scales.
That was driven by trying to incent
people that have to go get a CDL license
or that have a CDL license, that they get additional pay
because it's real easy for somebody with a CDL license
to go to work somewhere else and make a lot more money.
And we need a lot of non-CDL drivers
that don't require a big bus because we have cutaways
and we have vans and we were providing our own on demand.
So we wanted to make sure that we were getting access
to a different workforce.
That was the original reason
that we created this dual pay scale.
- I will say this about, I tend to not look at
whether it's union or non.
I try to look at it as, are we being fair?
If we're doing our job as an employer
and we're making sure that people are making
a competitive wage, that they have good healthcare.
I've been an advocate for our operators maintenance folks
to get paid fairly.
There were years where we were a couple of dollars lower.
We've done, I think, a great job with the board
in making sure that the pay scale was more competitive
because people need to be making a living wage.
When I stepped in the leadership role,
I was looking at the amount of take-home pay
in comparison to the insurance and benefits
that operators and others were getting.
It was not good, significant.
I mean, we didn't have a lot of participation.
So you'd go, hey, look, our insurance costs are low.
That's great.
Well, not really because people, if they need benefits
and don't have access to them,
it's not a good competitive environment.
So we've taken great strides
and the board's been supportive
of improving the healthcare plans
for folks to make it a living wage
and to make, again, to try to build
and instill pride in what we do.
Having worked on the West Coast,
there's some interesting things about that,
but it taught me a lot over 10 years.
It taught me a lot about value creation.
And in many cases, people will work for less money
if they love where they work
and they love what they're doing.
- Absolutely.
- And so the CEO of the management firm said,
every day when I'm at lunch, I'm watching,
I'm looking, I'm recruiting people that have passion,
that work really hard,
and I try to recruit them into becoming a part
of our organization because you build a great culture
that way, you build a team of passionate people
that love what they do.
And our job is to pay them fairly,
make sure that they have healthcare
and build a organization where people want to come to work.
And so union and non-union, to me, that's our mission,
is we're not here to create jobs,
we're here to provide mobility.
But in order to do that,
we have to have happy, healthy employees
that love what they do.
And that's certainly, I'm interested in doing that.
Whether we're contracting to work out to VIA or to MTMC,
that's always top of my mind,
is to create a competent, healthy, passionate workforce.
- I'm so grateful for us having this dialogue.
Let's see if there are any other questions
and give you a break. - Thank you, thank you.
- I just have one, I don't have a question,
but I do want to comment on what you just said
about we're not here to create jobs.
Whenever we are looking at another company to come in,
whenever there's a company that wants to come into Denton,
that's one of the first things they say to us
is that we're here to create jobs
and we have high-paying jobs.
That we can't help but to think in those terms
because we're here to create a space
where people want to live, work, and play.
So I'm not objecting to you saying it,
I'm just making the observation that you should be,
or not you, but the system should be in a process
of creating jobs that are sustainable
for people to want to live, work, and play in Denton.
- Yeah, yes, and I appreciate you.
- With that being said, we might want to add that
to the context of making sure that everybody is happy
and healthy and the job has been created
to fit their skill.
- Well, thank you for calling me out on that
'cause that's not, while I certainly said it,
that really wasn't what I meant.
It was like we're not creating jobs
just for the sake of creating jobs.
We wanna create jobs that are meaningful, that employ folks,
and that is certainly something that is top of mind at a,
I was asked to speak at a chamber event
and one of the things that they were doing
was honoring DCTA for being an employer,
a large employer in their city.
And job creation, upward mobility for folks,
is to the core of what we do and that's what I said.
So I appreciate you calling me out on that one
because it's not, that was not my intent
to make that statement in that way.
Thank you.
- Anything else?
- I was gonna make the same.
- The same comment that I recognize DCTA
is not a make work program,
but there are certainly opportunities to create jobs
as we serve more people hopefully in the future.
- Yes, thank you, thank you for your point.
- I'm just, I'm really grateful
that we can have a really frank and robust exchange
and I look forward to more and I'm very excited
about the future of DCTA.
Thank you.
- Thank you for the time
and I very much enjoy this engagement.
I think it'll build a better transit system
for your community, the more feedback that we get.
If anything, I err on providing more than less information.
So if you need to, just kind of tell me,
okay, we've heard enough because I'm passionate about it
and I am very much a, and you can ask our board,
I'm very much a believer in servant leadership
and I always have very direct every morning
that I wake up that I serve the Lord,
I serve your community, I serve our board
and I serve all of our employees and contractors.
And I differ very little between whether you work
for a contractor or you're a direct employee
because we all are here to deliver service to our public.
And I appreciate the service that you provide
sometimes late into or early into the mornings in serving.
And so we're all public servants
and I'm passionate about it.
- If we're a little cranky, maybe it's lack of sleep.
(laughing)
- Yes, so thank you very much.
- Yeah, you're welcome.
- Mayor Pro Temel--
- See what you got yourself into, Brittany.
- Mayor Pro Temelzer, if I may,
I wanted to address one of the comments
that came up during the conversation
and it's something Council Member McGuire
started out the conversation with
and just wanted to let you all know
that Mr. Suarez and our team
is just now beginning a relationship.
So I did hear some feedback about
not necessarily understanding
where all of the construction projects
are happening amongst the city.
And I know you all know that responsiveness
and accountability are very important for our department.
So I'm gonna request that we set up a meeting
so we can explain some of the areas
of which we actually communicate
with our residents and our citizens.
I know you're all aware of Discuss Denton,
the street construction report.
We have monthly coordination meetings
with many other folks, DISD, TWU, UNT, TxDOT.
I think it's very important
that we start those collaborations with DCTA
so that they understand where the projects are
that our team is delivering
or other departments are delivering amongst the city.
We are in the process of putting together that CIP map
that we've been working through,
through the Procore system, our new software system.
And then we actually have developed
what we call a Racine where we have different levels.
Responsibility is the R, accountability is the A,
C is the consultant phase, I is the informed phase,
or N is the not engaged phase.
And we actually sit down in the very beginning of projects
and have each internal department.
And we're looking to expand that to others
such as DCTA, DISD, Atmos, other folks
that will be impacted by the projects that are going on
so that they can decide at what level
they want to be involved in projects.
So I take that very much to heart
and wanna make sure that they understand
where we have construction going on in the city.
As we know, there are many construction projects
that are currently happening.
So just wanted to address that.
- Thank you so much.
- Great, I'm so glad to hear
that there will be that increased communication.
- Getting better all the time.
All right. - All right.
- Thank you. - Thank you.
- How do y'all feel about like a 10 minute break
before we do the last item?
We've been going for a couple hours.
Yeah. (laughing)
Yeah, okay.
So we're gonna adjourn at 11.03.
Yeah, we'll say we'll come back at 11.15.
Committee, we're coming back off break.
We have item D next, staff report
which has a bajillion pieces to it.
It's just staff report.
- Thank you, sir.
Happy to provide you with an update.
So the first thing I wanted to talk about
was the US 380 speed limit ordinance.
I know y'all heard us discuss this
in a few other conversations.
It's something that will go before city council
next Tuesday.
And we have been coordinating and working with TxDOT
along with our public works team
and along with our traffic division of our police department
to look at measures that could be taken along 380
east of town in the area of which
there's currently a construction project.
I know I've mentioned this several times,
but just want to remind you that,
oh goodness, that's okay.
As long as you're okay, we're good.
I wanted to mention that from the area,
basically I would say east of loop 288 to Rock Hill Road
which is within the city limits,
there is a bridge, as we're all aware of,
that goes over Lake Louisville in that area.
TxDOT has looked at measures to currently
work on a temporary solution
to actually install some type of barrier.
And currently that bridge does not have the strength
to support either a concrete barrier, a water barrier,
or even a tinsel, more of a wire type situation.
And so at this time, they're working on improving that bridge
to provide the additional support
so that they can work through that project.
And I know as you're all aware,
that's building sidewalks and turn lanes
and some additional measures.
The city really doesn't have a lot to do with that project
except for the standpoint of possible manhole or valves
that need to be moved or coordination
with our signal department,
which James is very familiar with.
But what we have worked to do through a speed study
that was collected is to, just during construction,
lower the speed limit on the section of roadway
from Rock Hill to North Roodale.
And so we will be lowering the speed limit.
It's currently westbound 60 miles per hour
and then eastbound 55 miles per hour.
So we're gonna be recommending lowering the speed limit
to 45 miles per hour during construction
to slow folks down in that area.
A lot of that is due to the impact
and we did the evaluation
after there were multiple fatalities in this area.
And so just wanted to bring that forward
to give you an update on the fact
that the ordinance will come to city council
on next Tuesday night.
The next, oh, yes ma'am.
- Any questions?
Yeah, Council Member McQuarrie.
- Yeah, so thank you so much for this.
I think it's a great idea.
I would even support maybe making it permanent
and not just during construction,
but that might be a conversation for another time.
Can you tell me a little bit
about what the legal constraints or requirements are
for the city to set speed limits?
And are those different depending on
if it's a textile road versus a city road?
- Tray, do you wanna speak to the legal requirements?
I can speak to the engineering requirements,
but not necessarily the legal.
The city passes by ordinance the speed limits
that are currently included in the backup information.
It shows the speed limits of the different roadways.
Tech Stop made this request to the city
as we're the ones who maintain the speed limit
through that area and enforce the speed limit.
What we would do just like we would do in this location
is actually provide a study
that would show what the speed limit is
that's traveled in this area.
We've received word from the police department
that they've had speeds over 100 miles per hour
actually clocked in this area.
And so what I would mention to you is,
and you might remember from our mobility presentation,
we're doing a citywide speed limit study.
And through that citywide speed study,
we're evaluating many different roadways,
but those speed limits are set through ordinance.
So once that speed study is completed,
and that is gonna take a few months to get completed,
then we'll be able to look at and reevaluate
if there's anything that needs to happen to the ordinance
or anything that needs to be updated.
And of course, that'll be something
that's brought back forward through this board
or this committee, and then also through council.
But the speed limits are set by ordinance.
And if you look in the backup of your ordinance,
you'll see a chart and it shows every single roadway
with all of the different speed limits.
- So, well, I guess my question is,
I recognize that setting speed limits is a delicate balance
and the engineers need to take into account
the design of the road and how fast people
actually drive on the road, and setting it too low
might not be very effective at preventing speeding.
But I guess just from a legal perspective,
does council have the authority to just say,
I want the speed limit on 380 to be 30 miles an hour?
Do we have the legal right to say that?
I'm not saying that would be a good idea.
- So our team, and I will refer to Trey
for the legal authority, but our team
would use traffic study data information.
We would use traffic engineering principle and practice
along with the Texas Municipal.
It was the T-M-U-T-C-D, and then also any other
AASHTO guidelines as far as roadways go.
And we typically look at the 85th percentile of speed,
which is the reason why we collect the speed study.
But that's really what the goal of this overall
city-wide speed study is to do is perform
is actually see what the speed limit is,
that people are actually traveling
in many of these roadway areas.
But many of those decisions are made
based on the data that's provided
and then the traditional cross-section of the roadway
and whether or not it's an arterial versus a collector
versus a residential street.
And those are types of things that would be evaluated.
But as far as a legal responsibility,
I'll have to refer to Trey
as to what our legal responsibility is.
- So regarding councils, I mean, it is council
that will set the speed limits within the city limits.
However, Texas statutes, both the Texas Transportation Code
and the Texas Administrative Code put certain requirements
on what that speed limit could be.
Specifically, the Texas Transportation Code
gives a city the authority to set speed limits
to the same extent that the Texas Transportation Commission
has authority to set speed limits.
And with that, the Texas Administrative Code states
in rule 25.21 that the city must base any speed zone
on a engineering or traffic investigation
regardless of the type of speed.
So while it is council that says
this is what the speed will be on this road,
there has to be a basis for it.
- Okay, all right.
Yeah, that was my question.
It can't just be I wanted this and therefore let's pass it.
It must be bid.
There is a legal requirement that we follow
engineering recommendations.
Okay, thank you.
- Alrighty, so I'll move on.
So Curly Street was the next item
that's on our staff report.
I know Council Member Byrd requested a traffic study
for Curly Street.
Just to report that that study was conducted
August 17th through August 20th.
The speeding was observed along Curly Street
with 16.9% of the drivers going over the posted speed limit.
So traffic operations added flags
to the existing speed limit signs
that happened on August 26th.
And when I say traffic operations,
just so you know, the gentleman that you see
in the black shirt, that's James Andrews.
He runs the Traffic Operations Department.
And so just so you're aware of who the individual is
who's doing all those work that work behind the scenes.
The Police Department has been notified
and they deployed the driver feedback sign
the week of August 30th.
The driver feedback signs typically stay
in a given location for two to four weeks
before being moved to another location across the city.
- What is the expected percent to exceed the speed limit?
I'm sure it's zero, but I could be wrong.
- No, sir.
Actually what we look at is the 85th percentile of speed.
So when we look at the overall traffic study
and that's when we collect that information.
Now the driver feedback sign is not going to collect
that type of information.
That'd actually be something
that's done through a traffic study.
But we look and evaluate how many individuals
are going over the speed limit.
So what that percentage is.
And then that gives us recommendations
as to whether or not we need to evaluate
what the speed limit is of that roadway.
- So is the normal expectation 15 percent exceed?
- That is correct.
- And so this was just a hair over that 16.9?
- That's correct.
And that's the reason why the first measure
that we do is deploy the driver feedback sign
to see that folks and make them aware
and notify that they're driving too fast.
And so if we continue to receive complaints
that we will look at other measures,
there's really kind of a step of actions
that we play through on those particular situations.
- It's a stunning indictment of the state of morals
in our society.
- I didn't hear you, I'm sorry.
- That's all right.
Keep going.
Alison got it.
- Can I interject here for just a moment?
So 16.9 percent, and because it's over 15 percent,
then that enacted the feedback signs.
Are we taking any kind of data
while the feedback signs are out
for those two to four weeks?
- We can--
- To see whether or not it's actually working.
- We can take additional data and do additional studies.
This is really kind of the next steps
is we've taken the opportunity to deploy
the actual driver feedback signs within this location.
And so really what the goal is with that
is to try to alert drivers.
If the problem continues to exist,
then we would look at possibly doing another traffic study
or just going to the next measure
with some type of traffic calming,
if necessary, in that area.
And it's right on the cusp of being right over that 15 percent.
- Okay, because I'm just thinking
about just Curly Street at this point.
That street is kind of deemed as a through street.
- Okay.
- There's not very many homes on that street
where people are just,
and there's a little neighborhood in there,
but it's very close to Colorado or Woodrow or Shady Oaks.
As it's coming out, it's kind of close to Shady Oaks.
Is that Shady Oaks or Shady Shores?
I always get those confused.
I'm sorry, you don't have to answer that.
But the question is,
if you're looking at it like a through street,
you know, that's the issue,
that Moore Street and Curly Street are through streets.
So I don't think that it's necessarily conditioning people
to slow down through there
if you're getting a variety of people all the time.
It's not like it's the neighborhood people.
The neighborhood people are the people
that are complaining about the fast traffic
coming through there.
So how do we address that
if we're just putting out the signs for two to four weeks,
we take them up,
but we're still getting just random people
coming through there, you know, like that?
- Sure, so if we continue to receive complaints
or have concerns in that area,
and the PD will also be doing monitoring
where they put up driver feedback signs many times,
they increase their enforcement in those areas also.
So after the two to four weeks,
we'll reevaluate the situation,
see if anything needs to be,
any additional improvement measures
or traffic calming devices need to be installed
in that area.
And that's what our team will evaluate.
We'll also work with traffic operations to see,
you know, from what their point of view,
if they have any additional feedback,
and we work together with the operations
and the engineering team to see
if there's any additional improvement measures we can make.
So this is really, it's kind of a stepped tiered situation,
so we've gone through kind of those steps
of putting up the additional flags
on the additional, on the existing speed limit signs,
deploying the driver feedback signs,
take some time to get that deployed,
let it sit in a current location.
If we continue to hear negative feedback or input
that says, hey, individuals are still speeding in this area,
then we'll work for additional traffic calming measures.
- So when you're continuing to hear,
are we talking about maybe about another month or two?
You know, to get some feedback
from the residents in the area?
You say, if we continue to hear,
is that gonna be, you know, just like a couple of weeks,
or three weeks, or five weeks, or what?
- Well, we absolutely work with our friends
at the police department,
and we meet with them monthly,
depending on if they have feedback on,
hey, we deployed a driver feedback sign in this area.
Through that timeframe, you know,
we had this many tickets that were given,
or this many enforcement issues that happened.
So we receive that data,
and then we also, if we receive continuous input,
or, you know, results from the residents,
or even council, et cetera,
you know, wherever the information comes from,
engaged it in requests many times.
If we continue to hear that,
then we look for what those next measures are.
So it does take a couple of months,
and so I would anticipate, you know,
towards basically this information,
and I have not checked myself,
but I absolutely can to see
if those driver feedback signs have been picked up.
So if they have, then we will talk with PDE
to find out if there's additional things
that they've received information on.
You yourself, if you've received additional feedback,
and then we'll start looking at what are those next steps.
- Okay.
I'm sure they'll call me.
- And I haven't driven curly,
but I absolutely can to see
if that driver feedback sign's still out there,
so I don't know the answer to that.
Haven't driven it.
- I'll go over there today and let you know.
- Okay, perfect.
That would be fantastic.
Alrighty, so the next item
is the Morris Street traffic calming solution.
So similar to the situation we just discussed on curly,
I know that Morris has been a street
where there's been concerns about speeding.
So staff is currently evaluating Morris Street
to determine potential traffic calming measures
and what should be put in place.
So as you know, and you've seen actually the data
that we've given you with a flyer
that shows, Council Member Byrd,
the different traffic calming measures.
So we're looking to see what might be best in this area.
There's many things we can look at,
whether we do some type of roadway diet,
add additional stop signs,
and several other measures that can take place.
So we're looking at the placement of the speed radar sign,
and we've already taken care of that,
where you were concerned that it was too close
to the stop sign on Morris Street.
So we did receive confirmation from the police department,
and that was back in September,
that they did move that sign.
But we're currently working through that evaluation
as to what is the best next steps.
I will also mention that on both of these streets,
we're also wanting to coordinate
with the current bond program that's in that area
to make sure nothing that we installed
would be something that would then be removed
as a part of the bond program.
So there's a lot of collaboration going on
between the existing condition
and then the future bond program projects.
- It just seems like it's coming pretty close.
I know the bond program is getting ready to get started.
- Yes, ma'am. - Starting that up,
and so we'll have to explain to the residents there
that you're not seeing anything
because something big is coming.
- Sure. - So maybe after,
you know, after it's part of the bond,
you know, when it's time to lay the street back down,
those calming measures could be added at that time.
- Sure, and that's part of what we want to evaluate
is looking at, you know, what makes sense.
Like I mentioned, we are not necessarily wanting
to put something down that would then be removed
as a part of the roadway being replaced.
But we will work and do work with traffic operations
to install signage.
And so definitely that close coordination
is very critical in this area,
being that the construction is, you know,
it's on the heels of working through that design process
and then moving on to construction.
Oak Street, so Mayor Perot and Malter,
I know this is not going to make you happy, sir,
but I know you ask about Oak Street continuously.
- I was feeling happy because you had it on the list, so okay.
So Oak Street is currently not anticipated
to be part of any roadway reconstruction
or roadway maintenance project.
- Why is it considered acceptable?
- Well, the roadway at the time of construction,
I mean, I know I've mentioned this to you,
did not follow the same standards
that the city has now moved to.
And so at this point, it's not a part of a project.
It doesn't have funding,
and it's not a part of that overall roadway construction,
whether it's part of a bond program
or a maintenance program,
which Danny Kramer, our Deputy Director of Operations,
is currently leading.
So in the grand scheme and the scale
of all the projects amongst the city,
it's not currently one that's currently slated
for either a maintenance
or a construction project at this time.
- I heard there's some conversation about potential
for another bond at some point.
- Sure.
- When would you anticipate that to be,
and do you think that Oak Street is just great as it is,
or do you think that'd be a candidate for a future bond?
- I'm not sure what would be included
in a future bond package,
but I know that it could be a roadway.
It could be, you know, there are many different things
that could be a part of a future bond package,
but I think that at that time,
we'll use the same type of criteria
that was put forward in the other bond programs
as looking at the overall OCI,
and I know that's something that Danny evaluates
when he looks at the overall OCIs,
and then from there,
which is the overall condition index of the roadway,
from there, then those roadways are selected
as a part of an overall bond program, so.
- Can you remind me how the OCI on Oak Street
compares to other, you know,
candidate segments that are not part of any plans today?
- I'm sorry, sir, I don't remember the OCI
that was of this roadway.
I know we reported that in the report last month.
I do believe the OCI did drop,
but I don't remember the actual OCI score
in comparison to other roadways,
or where it actually stands within the current bond program,
but we can look into that information
and report back to you.
- And when might we be looking
at bringing another bond package proposal to council?
- I am not sure of that timing.
- Yeah, it's disgraceful.
I'll just leave it at that.
I know you've got other items to cover.
- I have a general question about OCI
and, you know, how staff decides
what streets end up in a bond package.
Is OCI the only measure or are other issues
like needing expansion or needing curbs and gutters?
Are those types of things also included
in the consideration of whether something
makes it onto a bond package?
- I currently have not been a part
of any of the bond packages that have been put together,
but I can explain that OCI is the trigger that is used
in the last bond packages that have been put together
based on the information I have.
I'll let Danny expand.
I will tell you from staff's perspective
and the way that we started looking at projects
from a more holistic approach
as to whether or not utilities has projects in the area
that need to be replaced,
whether or not there's street lights or sidewalks.
There's many other components
that are currently being evaluated.
In the current bond package that we have,
drainage, sidewalks are not things that were evaluated,
but I think if we were to move forward
with a bond program in the future,
we would be looking at it from a little bit different lens,
which is more of a, as you see currently,
the neighborhood approach,
but then also more of a holistic approach
of what are other things that need to happen
minus just resurfacing the roadway
or reconstructing the roadway,
but I'll let Danny Kramer speak to specifically
how the current bond program was put together.
- Kind of some of the ways that we looked at it
was just the, we started with the OCI,
and what that does is help us narrow it down
to a better group.
As you mentioned, the expansion,
a lot of those are done as individual CIP projects.
Those are picked out for the maintenance side.
Mostly it's based on OCI as a starting.
Now we'll pull a list together
and usually go out and do field visits
on that whole list of where we're at,
just doing spot checks, verifications,
and seeing where everything is and going from there,
and then we discuss with the bond committee
on some of the issues there and what our recommendations are.
As stated, OCI is a big front runner,
and it is not the only one that we do,
but we also look at different traffic patterns
and stuff in the areas to try to figure out
what is the best direction forward for the city
and where we can help out with that.
- Yeah, that's helpful, and I guess I should clarify
what I'm thinking about as I ask that.
I'm thinking about residents' concerns
that were brought up last night about Highland Park Road.
I'm not sure.
I'd have to think about maybe the northern part
of Highland Park Road might have an OCI that's concerning,
but the southern part really doesn't.
It's not the OCI that's the problem, I don't think,
with Highland Park Road,
so I wanna make sure that we're looking at other metrics
that could trigger either CIP spending
or a bond project or something.
- One thing I do wanna say on the curbs and gutters
is when we install curbs and gutters,
it's not just putting the curb and gutter up.
That's also the drainage infrastructure underneath.
Highland Park, for example, does have roadway ditches,
is how it's set up for drainage,
and in order to properly install curbs and gutters,
we would have to put a drainage system under
to convey the same water,
which drainage is probably one
of the most expensive infrastructures to put in place,
so that's another factor we have to look in on those.
- Right, which is why I'm thinking about bond funding
for that, because I recognize
that's going to be a very expensive project.
Thank you. - Yep.
- Just a couple points to add to that.
As the roadways are selected,
keep in mind that's a very big project and purpose
of the bond committee, and part of their charge
is to look through and talk about
what is the best way to move forward.
I am not aware of when another roadway bond
package might come forward.
I know it could be within the next couple of years,
but I'm currently hearing that we could be looking
at more of parks and drainage-type projects,
and the other thing I just wanted to mention
so that I can kind of come full circle
and be able to explain,
that is the reason why it's so important
that we look at the mobility plan
and look at that multimodal approach.
We will take the mobility plan when we're working
and doing the capital planning,
along with moving forward with a stormwater master plan,
which in many areas, as Danny mentioned,
the Highland Park roadway project is, you know,
majority a drainage project.
We will be looking at roadway infrastructure
that we would recommend as a part of a CIP
to be put in a bond program or a capital improvement program
for the future.
It could be projects like Highland Park,
where it maybe doesn't meet the cross-section
and it has a lot of travel in that area or other roadways,
and I think that's what you'll see,
and that's really the purpose of that mobility plan,
is to help allow for projects that explain
what is the purpose of that roadway,
what is the cross-section, what is the classification,
and are we meeting the mark,
or are there improvements that need to be made?
So it's really from that plan phase
all the way through the design,
and then ultimately getting us to construction.
- Can you just sort of touch tangentially on Highland Park,
and, you know, naturally we're gonna need to talk about it,
but is that, I mean, I was gonna touch on it
under future items for mobility committee.
Is that basically it?
It's gonna get addressed through the mobility plan?
How are you, did you hear the discussion last night?
I think you were there.
- Yes, sir, I was present.
As far as the Highland Park roadway,
we are going to be evaluating the information
that was presented to us last night.
You may not, or may be aware of the fact that we also,
well, I know Council Member McGuire is,
because she was there with us,
but we actually have been receiving this information
probably for the last six weeks.
We did attend the Denia Neighborhood meeting
last month on September 27th,
and we've been requested to attend the meeting
that actually is this Monday night, the 25th.
Our team has worked with the Denia Neighborhood Association
to put together a presentation of multiple departments.
Rachel and her team are gonna be delivering
the capital projects in the area.
Danny and his team are gonna be looking
at maintenance and operation.
There'll be an individual from the development team
that'll be talking about development in the area,
and then also from the Parks Department.
And the goal with that is to produce the boundaries
of really Bonnie Bray to 35 to 377 to Roselon
is really what that true Denia Neighborhood is,
to explain to the residents all of the projects
that are going on in that area,
and help them understand the multiple ways
that communication is happening
between the departments within the city,
but then also the different projects that are happening
that are gonna actually help in some of those areas
of some of the concerns that they've raised.
Many of the questions that they asked, for example,
they may not be aware of the projects
that are gonna be happening for the 2019 bond program,
or what the future Bonnie Bray program or project is
in that area, future 35, North Texas Boulevard.
So we're gonna work through explaining that to them
on Monday night.
And I will tell you for the Highland Park Roadway Project,
we're gonna put something in the Friday report on that,
that addresses some of those concerns.
But I will tell you in order to build sidewalks
and do what is requested or what was suggested
at the meeting last night is really looking at
and asking about how can we get sidewalks?
How can we build it to the collector standard?
Danny hit on it.
It would be a capital project that would have to happen
in order to have an evaluation of the water
and wastewater infrastructure in the area
to see if improvements needed to be made to that,
an overall drainage project,
and it'd be a very large drainage project.
And as Danny mentioned,
that would probably be the majority of the funding.
And then also that roadway project with the cross section.
And I want you to keep in mind,
we also would have to acquire in many cases right away
along that corridor to build the cross section that's needed.
So I wanna be able to explain to you
the impact that that would be,
what the funding would be that's necessary,
and how many individuals that would actually impact.
And that's gonna take our team a little time
to put that together,
but something that we will share
as soon as we have that information together.
But that is really what it's going to take
to address many of the concerns
from actually looking at
what the typical collector section is in that area,
what it should be built to.
It's not just putting sidewalk out there
just simply because it's more of a country lane section
because of the drainage ditches
that are on both sides of the roadway.
No curb and gutter in many of those sections.
And we are also, just so you know,
I know last night they showed an exhibit
of the mobility plan.
That's the existing mobility plan.
And of course, as we're working through the update,
we're working on making updates and changes to mistakes
or things that we feel like need to be updated
based on the mobility actually
of getting folks to and from
and including for Nathan's benefit,
the bicycle and the pedestrian aspects.
So definitely a project that would be something
that would have to be funded
in order to do all the things that were requested.
My goal with the meeting Monday night
is to be able to explain to the residents
all of the projects that are happening in the area
that Highland Park and Parvin Road are actually connecting
is being renamed.
There are gonna be other ways to get around in that area
and give them an overall picture
of the capital projects, the development projects,
the parks projects, and then of course,
the maintenance projects that are going on in that area
so they can understand how much work is truly happening
within those confines that I explained.
- Did you have a, thank you for that.
Did you have a response or a reaction
to the member of the public who said
that it was kind of misidentified in the mobility plan
based on its width?
Did you catch that part?
- I did receive a copy of the report.
I have not had an opportunity to look at it in great depth,
but we are gonna be evaluating the actual drawings
that they put forward showing what the 2015 mobility plan
has versus what our proposal is for the 2020 mobility plan
and actually looking at that TIA.
Many of those items are reviewed
through our development process,
but we wanna go back and check just to see
if there's anything that we have concerns about,
but I did listen intently,
but haven't had an opportunity since one o'clock this morning
to, at eight o'clock this morning to evaluate it.
- Come on, how many hours have passed since then?
(laughing)
Chop chop.
- So, but no sir, I am absolutely wanting to look into that
and I know Chandra will assist with that, so.
- Great, thank you.
Anything, oh I'm sorry, Council Member McCoy.
- Yeah.
- I'm glad you bring up some of the other collector streets
including Parvin in that area.
Can I ask that you make sure you also address Rose Lawn
and the plans for Rose Lawn going forward,
just in that presentation on Monday?
- Sure, we can look into Rose Lawn.
Very familiar with that area.
One time during my career, I did the water line
and the elevated storage tank in that area, so no problem.
We can look at what the mobility plan shows
for Rose Lawn and what our current anticipation would be
of any project in that area, so.
Okay.
So, Rachel has been able to look into
some additional information that actually
is talking about the overall condition index,
so she's like my private investigator over here
on the side looking into that.
So I'm gonna allow her to go ahead
and share some of the information.
Just Council Member, I'm sorry,
Mayor Pritchett Maltzer to go back to the Oak Street, so.
Oh, okay, go ahead, Danny, sure.
Whichever one of you, I'm perfectly fine
with either one of you, thank you very much.
- From the 2015 study, as Rachel found,
and I do apologize, my laptop is back there charging,
was sitting at a 70, 77,
and the new study is showing at a 49.
Internally on the maintenance side,
we have been looking at some temporary fixes
and trying to get it to smooth it out.
Different ones we haven't come up with a good solution.
- 49 is like good or something, isn't it?
- It's, no, it's, I'd have to look,
but usually on the last bond we did a 20 and below.
It's at the low range.
It's still, for the most part, structurally sound.
It's, the ride quality is not gonna be the best,
usually on it, but it's structurally there.
And I know there's an issue with the soils that run up
through that section of town right there.
We found it on a soil map, and this was as,
Becky stated earlier, it was,
when that road was done at that time,
the current standards were not followed
on how we mix the soil and do that,
and I think that's where the whole thing,
where we had the whole issues on the testing of that.
So we're looking at some temporary ways
to mitigate the issue, and before we can get
to a full reconstruct and a fix on that,
but we do not have a good solution right now.
- I'm interested to hear what you come up with,
'cause structurally sound to me suggests
it's not going to move further,
but I can't imagine the original design
had a line like that on it.
- Right, and it's, the way the soils are set up,
it didn't harden correctly because of the,
what we're thinking is the sulfites in the soil
reacts with the lime on that.
That should have been used for proper testing,
more of a cement stabilization instead
of a lime stabilization, which should have fixed that issue.
So we're looking at some different options
to try to fix that without ripping up the whole road
with everything else going on in the area.
- Yeah, I mean, it's, I just, whatever,
I don't wanna rant, you've heard me out before.
Okay, thank you.
- Alrighty, so I'm gonna move on
to the Hinkle traffic circle.
I know last month you asked for an update.
So Danny and his team were actually working
with real estate to obtain a construction easement
and right-of-way access to install the sidewalk.
Real estate has estimated that the letters,
to have the letters sent to the homeowners
the week of October 18th, so that was this week.
And once the letters are sent out,
it's expected to take 30 to 45 days
to have those clothes paid and recorded,
which does take a little bit of time.
When they receive back all the responses,
then public works will work through
starting that construction.
So right now they don't have access
or the right to get onto the properties
to remove the tree as necessary.
- Yeah, pardon me, I just wanna make sure I'm tracking.
The right-of-way we're talking about is to get at the tree?
Is that, or is this a different part of that?
- Yes, sir, and also build the sidewalk in the area.
Danny, if you'd like to explain more, go right ahead.
- Yeah, so the sidewalk has to fall right at the edge
of the right-of-way line.
We'll need a little bit of an easement
for the construction of putting it in,
and also to remove the tree to make sure
that we can legally be on the property to get that down.
Now, we have talked to the homeowner on the south side.
We've already talked to her.
We've got everything set up with removing of the tree.
She's fine with that and the replacements
to what they're doing.
We've got the quotes and everything set up
for all the sidewalk based off the plans,
and as soon as we get the real estate go ahead,
it should just be weather dependent.
We should be able to just go right in and get it taken care of.
- Great, okay, so now I'm tracking, thank you very much,
and so what you're talking about is the timeline
to acquire the right-of-way.
- That's correct. - That's like 30 days plus.
- 30 to 45 days is the current process
that Danny has been given from our real estate department,
and that's really just, at this point,
what he's waiting for is that access to the property
so that he can, like he mentioned,
remove the tree and install the sidewalk
without getting on private property in that area.
So once he has that, then he's committed
to getting that taken care of as we all are very excited
to have that taken care of, so.
- Thanks. - Thank you, Danny.
So the next item that came up was a question
on Campbell Street and talking about the type of curbs
that were actually in that area.
Those type of curbs are called rolled or drive curbs.
The rolled curbs have sloping faces
that allow vehicles to encroach
without damaging tires and wheels,
and really those cars can cross them to access their driveway.
So it's just a different type of curb
that was actually constructed in that area.
I don't have a reason why that was constructed,
just wanted to explain the difference
and what that type of curb was.
- Yes, ma'am. - Councilmember Byrd.
- Thank you, Mr. Chair, thank you.
I know for sure that I mentioned the wrong street, okay?
So I would like for you all to,
my initial concern was for Janney Street, J-A-N-N-I-E.
And I believe that's a street
that's just on the west side of Campbell Street.
And that street has no curbs,
that's what I was trying to get to.
And then if you're going on McKinney Street
and making a left turn there,
there are a series of trees that splits the street,
and there's no caretaking of anything in that area.
They just put up a brand new little retail area,
suns, coffee, some other things
that are coming up over there.
But there are literally no curbs on that street.
And the concern is when folks make a left turn
or a right turn into that area,
there's those trees there.
And there's just one little sign
that tells the driver to go over to the right,
so they won't run into the trees.
But there's still curbs.
Also on the corner of Paisley and Roodale,
the same thing.
So I, again, I wanna make sure
that those folks over there are not forgotten.
I mean, just by even just having even the roll curbs
would even be more sufficient
than not having literally anything at all.
So will you all please add that to your list?
I appreciate the update on Campbell Street.
I drive down Campbell Street all the time.
So I got that.
And thank you all for taking time to do that.
- Sure, that's no problem. - I think my concentration
should have been Jenny Street.
- Okay, well, we heard you.
That's perfect.
We'll look at that.
I don't have any reasons why trees
would be in the middle of the red way,
but obviously probably someone knows.
But we will look into that
and look into also the Paisley-Roodale area.
And then one thing we will want to evaluate
is any coordination with any projects
that either are being done through the maintenance operations
or through the capital projects.
So we'll see what's going on in that area.
So thank you for bringing that to our attention.
Fantastic.
So the last item on my staff report is the FM 2181 plans.
Councilmember McGuire requested a copy of the actual plans
and asked about sound walls
and where those were going to be installed.
I did send her an email with a copy of the sound wall plans,
which actually showed the locations.
And then we actually today delivered her a flash drive
because the set of plans is so large it could not be emailed.
And so she now has a copy of the plans in her possession.
And so hopefully we've addressed those concerns.
And I know as you may have questions,
different things that come up
or different things that you'd like for us
to explain to you, we'll be happy to do so.
But hopefully that answered those questions
and those requests.
- Yes, thank you so much.
I look forward to looking through that file
on the thumb drive.
- Sure, no problem at all.
Alrighty, so let's move on to the last thing of the day,
which is going through the future agenda items.
I believe today that we've addressed
the majority of the interest that you had
at the last meeting.
I know there's still some additional questions
about Curly Street
and what additional improvement measures will be done there.
Staff is still evaluating Morris.
We can continue to bring you updates on Hinkle.
And then of course, instead of Campbell,
we'll look at Janie and Paisley Roodell.
Is there anything additional
that you would like to add to this list?
Yes, ma'am.
- Thank you.
So Eric Pruitt had asked about this,
I believe a few months ago.
There is a trail that leads from Lake Forest Park
south and currently ends right before Hickory Creek Road
and then picks up again south of Hickory Creek Road
and runs just west of McNair Elementary
down to Cross Timbers Park.
The plans that were shared with Eric in the past
showed that there would be a trail stub
connecting that trail in Lake Forest Park
to the trail that leads to Cross Timbers Park
and that there would be a safe crosswalk there
to the west of McNair.
But the curbs have been completed
on the south side of Hickory Creek Road
and there is no curb cut out for a crossing there.
So I was hoping you could check in on that,
see if they're still planning to put a crossing there,
if that was just an error,
if they need to cut that curb again to add an ADA ramp
to cross Hickory Creek there next to McNair Elementary.
- Sure, we can definitely look into that.
Rachel's team is delivering
that Hickory Creek Roadway project
and we can see if there's something that was missed on there.
I sure hope they don't have to cut the curb
'cause that's my least favorite thing.
I hate cut curbs.
If there's anything I don't like,
that what it looks like, it's a cut curb.
And they hear me say that over and over and over
'cause I don't like exposed aggregate on a concrete,
but that's just an engineering nerd that comes out in me.
But definitely we will look into that and see what happens
and if there's something that needs to be taken place.
So thank you for bringing that to our attention.
That's no problem.
- Great, thank you so much.
- We have one more.
- Yeah, please.
- And I'm also always curious about what are the plans,
long-term plans for McKinney Street from 288 to Woodrow?
I know that is a very busy street.
We've added some additional density on that street,
but it's just nothing occurring between there.
We've put two additional large apartment complexes there.
I think there's one, two, three, four and townhomes there,
five additional large structures there,
but there's not anything that I can tell that's going on
there, so I'd like to get some more information about that.
I know that I've already have gotten a call
from a possible developer that's looking over there
in that big area of a 288 on the other side of the street.
- I am prepared to answer that for you today.
- Okay.
- So loop 288 from Woodrow, Audre all the way to,
I'm sorry, McKinney from Woodrow, Audre all the way
to loop 288 is not currently a capital project
that's planned.
Rachel and myself worked on a list of projects
reviewing the mobility plan and a few projects
that are currently on our list
that maybe don't have all of the funding.
This is one of the projects that actually
the city manager's office also asked us to look into.
We have submitted it to Mr. Polster as his representation
for the county as a possible project that would be funded
through the county bond program,
but currently we do not have any plans for that,
so it will either be something that we will be looking at
receiving funding through the county
or if there would be a possible roadway bond program
that could come out sometime,
and I'm not aware of that happening,
but that would be the way that we would have
to receive funding similar to what I mentioned
on the Highland Park roadway project.
So we're aware of the fact that McKinney
is going to be improved from basically the loop
all the way east of town,
and know that the section really between Woodrow
and the loop has not taken into place.
It's not just roadway infrastructure.
We also want to improve the drainage infrastructure
in that area.
There are utility lines that would have to be improved
in that area, so there's a very large project,
and so we are really anxious to hear
about that county bond program,
which we're hearing now it could be possibly fall of 2022,
but definitely something that's on our radar
and our list of large projects that we'd like to see
completed within the city.
Yes, ma'am.
- Yeah, I'd like to add to the list if I could.
I don't know how many speed studies you've got going,
but Malone Street I think was done so well
that really invites driving above the posted speed limit,
and it's got a very well-done turn lane
that anecdotally is used as a passing lane,
so my ask would be if you could take a look at
what, do a speed study and see if in fact
we're in line with what's posted,
and then I would not suggest, if you find the concern
to be warranted, I would not suggest there's any issue
with the signage.
I think we'd have to think about what design considerations
could be brought to bear, maybe not made out of concrete,
but temporary adjustments that would bring
the driver behavior into line with the desired posting.
- Sure, so could you give me this section of Malone?
My assumption is you're talking north of 380?
- No.
- I'm sorry, south of 380?
- You're talking about between university and scripture.
- University and scripture, okay, so south of 380.
So we can absolutely look into that,
so are you expressing that individuals are using
the center lane as a driving lane
instead of just for turning left or right movements?
- Yeah, that is, but the primary concern is speeding.
- Speeding, okay.
Sure, we can evaluate that and look into that specifically,
that's no issue, and report back,
and it may be necessary for us to conduct
a speed study in that area.
I'm not aware of the last time that was conducted,
but happy to look into it.
- Appreciate it.
So I've got anyone else, anything else?
All right, we're up to concluding items.
Anyone want to make a little speech,
talk about what fairs people want to go to,
or anything like that, no?
That's it, no concluding items?
- All righty.
- We are adjourned at 12.05.