Good morning, and welcome to this meeting of the Mobility Committee of the City of Denton.
We have a quorum present Council Member Byrd isn't able to join us this morning, but two
is a quorum.
I'm going to exercise a little discretion from the Chair before we get into items for
individual consideration.
I'll recognize members of the public who would, you know, come and would like to speak
to us.
I know Ms. Greco is here if you'll give your name and address.
I'll start the clock and we'll give you four minutes.
There you go.
Good morning, Eva Greco, 802 West Oak Street, Apartment 5 in Denton.
I feel like I haven't left since yesterday, since last night's pleasure is on mine Ms.
McGuire.
I have been talking about this GoZone and we were discussing it last night, Mr. Meltzer.
My issue is not specifically with temporary change, lack of a better term, it's how everything
was done.
I am on Citizen Advisory Committee for DCTA and at one particular meeting, Nicole Recker,
multiple things that she stated to me turned out to be false and just pushed and pushed,
did not listen to the citizens, the ones who use, the ones who make mass transportation,
the riders.
Nobody listened to us.
We were ignored.
We've had multiple issues, okay.
At the Jazz Festival, GoZone, complete failure.
They were not able to accommodate the people.
We had a council member or two that I spoke to, they attempted to use the GoZone at the
Jazz Festival.
Nope, nothing available.
We were told months before preparing for the Jazz Festival that GoZone, they were going
to make sure they had extra vehicles available.
They did not accommodate.
Two days, no, yesterday morning or two mornings ago on a social media group, there was an
individual who was in a wheelchair, had a doctor's appointment.
She went on to GoZone the day before to set up her appointment and she was told that they
don't have any wheelchair accessible vehicles.
Unfortunately, she had to scramble and she got a ride from a friend the next day.
These drivers, it's just how this whole thing was done.
The city of Denton gives millions of dollars to DCTA every year.
There is no tracking of that money.
Where is that money allocated?
I've been asking this for about four and a half years.
I've been coming to meetings.
I've been asking this question, to this day nobody has been able to answer me.
I just was hoping, because I had individuals coming to me, "Well, you're from New Jersey.
You know mass transportation.
Give us ideas, this and that and all."
I was just shunned, shunned.
It's not fair.
You can't take a vehicle that holds six individuals maximum, no social distancing by the way, and
you can't tell me that's better than a vehicle that will hold 75 people.
Your zones, another complaint from citizens is your zones for GoZone are small.
I cannot take, if I am at the bus station on Hickory, I cannot get a GoZone to take
me up to the loop.
That's a different zone.
At a May council meeting, Mr. Suarez stated, and it's not going to be verbatim, that in
at least 10 years that he's been with DCTA, he has seen no improvement to the bus service.
Well, that leads me and a lot of other people asking, "Well, what have you been doing with
the money?"
Thank you for your time.
Thank you for coming, and I hope you'll stay and hear the update.
We're not posted to respond, but I think people who are giving reports, touch on those subjects.
That may be helpful.
Are there any other members of the public who came and wish to speak to us?
Okay.
That's great.
Let's go ahead with our items for individual consideration.
A, consider approval of the minutes of October 20th.
I'll entertain a motion, I'm looking for any possible person who could-
I move approval of the minutes.
Okay.
I'll second.
All in favor?
Aye.
Minutes of October 20th are approved.
Item B, receive a report and hold a discussion regarding the City of Denton transportation
slash mobility project status report.
That's not me, I promise.
You're welcome.
Maybe.
All right.
Good morning.
John Poulster, Innovative Transportation Solutions.
I'm never sure where to look, so if I'm looking down, it's out of disrespect.
It's out of visualness.
It has to be-
Safest choice.
Okay.
So we'll start with the first project, and I will say right now, overall, these projects
are all moving as they should, so there's not a lot of issues we need to talk about
as far as negative 2181, we're still on track for completing in August of next year.
They have done the traffic switch will be done right after Thanksgiving and before Christmas,
and that still works within the timeframe for the contractor to be able to finish the
project by August, including the sound wall that has to be relocated, so there's no problems
on this job.
The Mayhill 35 project, we continue to work with all the utilities in the corridor, and
if you'll look, there's quite a few that we're dealing with, but it looks like all the providers
are playing nice together, and we are working with the city staff, Becky and Rachel, they
stepped in and really have done a good job keeping that project on track for the letting
date, and we're still targeting the September 23 timeframe.
So everything on Mayhill is tracking as it should, and that's a $72 million job, and
I think I told you last time, I can't remember, but the reason the numbers aren't highlighted
anymore is because they actually lowered the construction cost to its actual and they matched
the category two funding, so it's fully funded, just waiting to get the right-of-way utilities
relocated.
Then your big job around the corner, the 35E merge, 35W, again, it's on track for that
same timeframe of 23, utilities are the critical path item, you'll see again that it's a full
page and a half of utilities, same here, Rachel and Becky stepped in and we're on track to
keep this project on its current let date, and I'm bringing up utilities because we're
in that phase of the project, the design's done, cleared, the right-of-way's acquired,
and so the utilities are the critical path item on this project.
And again, it is fully funded at the, just shy of $400 million up to 77.
Then the breakout job, we are still on track for January, I think it'll be substantial
in December, the traffic issues, we are moving to the next phase, probably the next two weeks,
which means that the exit ramp will be open and there will then be moving to construct
the entrance ramp just north, or just south of 380, north on this project, so everything
is progressing well, except for the traffic on the main lanes.
And then your $763 million job north of 77 all the way up to the county line, it is progressing
for a late 23 let date, again, utilities are a critical path, and we seem to be in a pretty
good position on this project, it'll be led as three projects again because of the dollar
amount, not because of the, that they need to do it in three projects, they need to keep
the contracts below a certain number.
Is that a statutory requirement?
No, sort of, because if you get above a certain dollar amount, then you have to do a design
bill alternative, and TechSoc doesn't want to do a design bill on this, so they have
to keep it below a certain dollar amount, and then they can do, it's what's called
design bid build, which is a standard contract letting.
And you get more contractors bidding on a design bid build than you do on a design build.
Design builds are for mega projects that, like when we did 35, AGL stood for Archer
Western granite and lane construction, so those are three big companies that came together.
I want to make sure I'm tracking, the thing they don't want is to not have the bid stage,
they want bidders.
They want bidders, exactly, because it attracts more bids.
So your main lanes on 35W, we are continuing, we had to resubmit the environmental through
the tip cycle, which was October 23 was the deadline, February is when it will be approved.
After the tip is revised, then the project will be environmentally cleared, but we've
already cleared the frontage roads back in June of 2020, which is the same footprint,
and we are being told that we'll have HNTB sometime in November, but they told me in
October it would be sometime in October.
So we'll see, I'm not sure what the holdup is on that, but they are focusing HNTB's efforts
on 407 North to the city of Denton.
Now this could change, their contract, they've been selected for the entire corridor with
the infrastructure bill, and what we think we're going to hear in December where Houston
doesn't make their deadline for the Grand Parkway, that some of that money will come
back and then the commission will reprioritize that money to other projects.
We think that 35W is pretty high on the list of projects that are eligible.
So we might end up expanding in the scope.
Okay, so this is the project from Luke 288 out to 377.
It continues to move rather well.
The speed limit will be enforced, I guess starting seven days ago, six days ago throughout
the corridor, and we are progressing on that project, and we are still on track for the
December 23 completion date.
The east section, we've had a kickoff meeting last week, and then yesterday we met with
some of the "keep it, make 380 safe" folks, and we are anticipating this project starting
first or second week of January for construction-wise, and again, it's really related to co-serve.
So we just got co-served clear, and the reason that's important, now that's co-served gas,
electric.
We are anticipating them to be done sometime in November, and the reason that's important
is because Grande and Suddenlink and several other entities hang on those poles, and they
can't move until co-serve gets their lines done.
So that's our critical path for this project, but we think we're going to make it, and it'll
begin construction sometime in January, and it's a 36-month contract.
Okay, so there is a feasibility study completion meeting that will be held December 2nd.
This is basically to come in and tell the communities along that corridor what the feasibility
study has found, and essentially what it has found is that the most feasible alternative
for 380 is a controlled access facility along its existing alignment.
And we have buy-in from the county standpoint.
We have buy-in from all the communities along 380.
The two most impacted are Crossroads and Little Elm, but we're coordinating with them on how
we can make that impact less.
The Commissioner's Court on Tuesday, I think it was Tuesday, in the past, this month, put
a contract, an RFQ on the street for doing the environmental clearance for the Luke 288
Brown section as a controlled access facility like it shows up in both the city and the
county's thoroughfare plans to add frontage roads.
So and then we had a meeting yesterday, that was yesterday, right, yesterday with Tech
Stock, the big man himself, the district engineer, Travis, and then Becky and Scott McDonald
were there.
And we think we've got an interim workaround for the developments that are, you know, have
rights there, but we're controlling their access to 288.
So we think we've got a solution.
We're going to be meeting with Scott and Becky and company and just kind of see what we can
do to work it out, but it holds to that philosophy of building frontage roads, either temporarily
or permanently, in this section of roadways so that they're not directly accessing the
main lanes, 60 miles an hour.
In 28 West, we had a kickoff meeting on this project in October and Chank Patel is, Jay
Bog is the Tech Stock manager and Jacob Roberts is the PSNE program manager for CPY.
And we are just getting started on that, but the coordination is primarily between Chank
Patel and the city because this is fully within the city and impacts a lot of the developments
going on in the city to the west of 35.
1515, again, same thing.
We had to do a little bit of work on this one.
You'll see that we had a couple of changes to the schematic that required us to do a
re-eval.
We've got the re-eval done and we are now progressing forward with the PSNE.
You'll note that it's about $36 million and we had 500,000.
So between now and October of 2024, we got to find a way to come up with $36 million,
not insurmountable.
1173, again, $47 million job.
This was also put on the street for design and it's already environmentally cleared.
So we should have somebody on contract probably January, maybe end of December to do the design.
And our intent is get the project ready so that when 35 goes under the knife, like this
section is 400 million, the section just north of it is almost 800 million.
And we're thinking that we can find a way to jam a little $47 million job into that
nearly billion dollar project, well, it's over a billion, at the same time, because
this section of road is needed, because we're already building the interchange at Barthold
and the realignment to 35 job.
Yeah, so we are still, text I still analyze in the course and we are scheduling a meeting
and we'll get back with city staff to come up with a plan and we're close on it.
I don't know if Becky wants to add anything to it, but I think we're close on getting
at least a project that we can bring back to everybody to say, here's what we plan on
doing.
What say you and the intent is to do it in such a manner so that text I can use their
maintenance funds as opposed to the actual straight out contract, because that would
take time.
Maintenance is a quicker route to do it.
Well, I think I'm done with questions, you are quiet today.
I noticed in my peripheral vision, Councilmember McGuire, previously writing notes.
Do you have questions?
No, I just am a note taker.
Thank you so much.
That's good.
I like it when there's no questions.
Great.
All right.
Thank you, John.
Okay.
Moving on.
Item B, receiver report and hold the discussion regarding the city of Denton, regarding updates
on the Denton County.
Item C, let's do C.
Receiver report and hold the discussion regarding updates from the Denton County Transportation
Authority.
Morning, Ray.
Good morning.
Good morning, Chair and members of the committee.
Let me find, I believe this is it.
And do I need to share the screen or is it already being shared?
You want to help me out here?
Make sure that...
It's just going to be...
Is that where you are?
Right there.
Yes.
And then just choose the one you're...
Is that one there?
There you go.
Just pick that one.
Sure.
And... okay, how are we doing for some reason?
There we go.
All right.
Hopefully, that's sharing.
Well, good morning.
Welcome.
I'm here to provide an update on GoZone and fixed route service.
Since the launch on September 7th of GoZone, we continue to see significant increases in
ridership on the GoZone.
The highest ridership day is nearing 1,500 completed rides on a day.
We've seen a significant increase in the number of unique riders, which is good.
Overall, there's a rating function in the app after somebody takes a ride.
It prompts them, "How was your experience?"
Overall, it's trending very positively.
We certainly always have concerns by citizens with particular rides, but overall, 4.7 out
of 5 is a very good rating.
The average duration on wait times is 12.6 minutes.
Now, I've tried to use the service myself at times, and it can be longer than that,
but that's the average wait time.
And the average distance that's being covered by the trips is 3.9 miles.
I'm sorry.
The 12 point -- don't mind going back -- the 12.6 minutes is the wait time, it's not the
ride duration?
Ride duration, so that's how long the average --
That's the ride, but --
The ride.
Yes.
I'm sorry.
If I said average wait time.
What's the wait?
Do you have that as well?
So we've been trending under 15 minutes, around 14, 14 and a half.
The application, the way it's worked, is purely on demand.
We have a zone that covers Highland Village and Lewisville, and a zone that covers Denton,
and the vehicles, the way it was originally set up, would move to wherever the priority
is.
So there's been some shifting going along with the number of vehicles in each zone.
We're going to continue to try to smooth that out over time, but that's just a process that
we have to go through.
But it does seem to be hitting around the 15-minute average wait time, which was expected
in the contract.
Okay?
I shall also ask you -- I mean, I need to ask that for clarification.
Sure, sure.
Harold, do you want us to hold our questions until you get all the way through?
No, please.
Yeah.
Okay.
However you want to do it.
Yeah.
So I -- obviously, I've seen -- I saw all of this on Monday, but a question came up for
me since Monday that's only tangentially related to this, but where is VIA's, like, base of
operations for the GoZone program?
Like, where are -- for example, where are the GoZone vehicles stored and maintained?
So at the end of shift, in the Denton zone, they're at Med Park.
Okay.
And what happens once the operators get to their vehicle and they unlock the vehicle,
they're dispersed to -- based on the system's knowledge or the data, it will disperse them
into areas throughout the zone, so they're not all just sitting at the hub waiting.
Okay.
So first thing in the morning, they get there, they turn the vehicle on, and they'll drive
out to locations around where they typically see active rides happening in the mornings,
and then as the rides start coming in, the system will automatically start combining
the trips that are going within reason to a similar area so that you're getting the
effect of shared ride service.
Okay.
All right.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
Other questions?
Not at this time?
Oh.
Okay.
I can always go back on the slides.
That's just a quick update on what's happening with GoZone.
Again, we're in our second month and going into our third.
We're still very, very early, so there's things that we need to work out.
I think VIA has been very responsive in addressing issues, but there's still some, and we'll
work through them.
Really focusing on fixed route, because we have the December 2nd date coming up, which
is an important board date for DCTA.
Just to ground the conversation before we get into this, the way the vote was cast in
July, the July board meeting, the board agreed and motioned, and it was approved.
That budget would be approved through December 6th, and the intent was that service would
end subject to any data that would suggest that we would need to continue service on
fixed route.
Then it would take a motion by a board member and a second and, of course, approval of the
board to continue service.
As it states right now, or as it sits right now, is the service is budgeted through December
6th, December 2nd.
We're going to walk the board through quite a bit of analysis.
The board gave direction to DCTA staff that they wanted staff to work with.
The experts, in this case, that would be Accenture and VIA themselves, and so we've been through
a lot of collaboration and discussions about fixed route, what recommendations we would
make to make it more effective, as you've heard a lot about the ten passengers per hour.
There's certainly portions of the day where we're hitting ten passengers per hour, but
the intent and the direction that was given by the board was to come back and make recommendations
based on what we've heard from board members, from certainly what we're hearing from the
City of Denton about wanting to retain fixed routes, so we'll be making some recommendations.
Likely we'll receive a report from Accenture and VIA themselves about what they think with
respect to service.
I think the general direction has been that there's certainly, the data does support keeping
fixed route, but there's going to be some discussion about what that looks like.
It may not be exactly the same level of service, and I think everyone has suggested that that's
a reasonable approach.
I have not had an opportunity to present this nor have the experts to the board, but there'll
be a very good, healthy discussion about the data and the dynamics.
What I want to walk you through today is this data that you're seeing is data.
It's from September.
The reason for that is it takes a while to gather all the data and parse it out and present
it to the board, so the board, to give you the latest information the board hasn't seen,
we don't feel like that's appropriate this time, so we will bring the information once
the board has seen it.
We'll certainly share it with you.
What you will see is September data, but it's still relevant as to how the board is going
to go through some decision-making processes, and it'll give you an idea of how the data
actually looks.
These are the primary objectives or the framework that's going to be used for the board with
regard to decision-making.
We've all heard about the 10 passengers per hour.
We want to make sure that we're also looking at relevant measures of performance, and we
should be looking at density, productivity, equity, and stability for alternative solutions,
as well as looking at things like what's the seat availability, both on fixed route and
on demand, what's the on-time performance, what level of trip cancellations we're having
on GoZone.
I will say that the way GoZone has been deployed and some of the feedback that we received
and the data that we've looked at as staff is a 75-cent ride for a three-mile trip is
the same price that you pay to go completely across town.
The longer the trip, you would think you'd have an opportunity to aggregate more people,
and it would be more efficient because you can pick them up and drop them off, but it's
actually the inverse.
When you occupy a vehicle for 30, 40 minutes on a long trip, it makes it less efficient
and therefore would argue that we should have more smaller zones as opposed to one very,
very large zone.
But these are the types of things that we're going to be looking at, not only for via but
for fixed route, and then coming back to the board with some of these productivity measures.
And so while you look at average --
If I may ask you a couple of questions.
Yes, sure.
About the idea to be discussed about smaller zones, is the idea that you would only be
able to ride within a smaller zone?
No, and actually, let me retract on that, if I may.
I don't know that -- I'm not sure what the data is going to present.
The consultants have not come back with that.
I don't know that it'll be a shorter -- a smaller zone.
I believe that there's an option that the zone will stay the same.
But how people travel -- there's a series of variables that will help shape travel decisions.
Pricing as an example is one concept.
Right now, we charge 75 cents for a trip on via.
That's promotional pricing.
That wasn't the long-term intent of the board.
It was to get people to start using the system.
One seat ride on bus is $1.50.
So there's been discussions about -- well, I believe even from council meetings in Denton,
there's been the request of, why don't we make fixed route free, as an example.
So if you start thinking about, well, how does pricing change people's choices?
If you still allow that long trip, as an example -- and it's not 75 cents, but the further
you go, the more time you're occupying.
Should that person pay a higher rate for the distance traveled?
Or could they alternatively use fixed route if it were priced less expensively or free?
Those are all things that should be considered when you're looking at how do you build an
effective and efficient multimodal system.
So that's one variable.
There's certainly a lot of flexibility in how you shape and design a system.
One way would be to -- and you've probably heard a lot of first and last mile, so a lot
of on-demand is what they call first, last mile, connections to hubs, connections to
a rail station, connections to a Fouts Field hub, as an example.
And you can set up a physical constraint that says we have a zone around that within, let's
say, two or three miles, and everything feeds into that, and you feed into a fixed route
system.
That is one solution.
Another solution is you use pricing and distance to determine -- just like taxicabs and Uber
and Lyft -- the further you go, the more it costs you.
So those are all things I believe that the consultants are going to be looking at to
make recommendations on how we leverage both fixed route and on-demand GoZone, and it will
be presented to the board.
I thought you might have been heading -- but I totally take in what you're saying, that
many ways of looking at it are going to be evaluated, but when you talk about smaller
zones, I thought that led is you might have a two-zone ride, but not that -- I think there's
a concern that I've heard that with smaller zones, you can't get there, but I think it's
really just how do you structure the pricing to make it equitable?
Correct.
And that's where the expertise of VIA and other on-demand companies that we've worked
with have other ways to allow -- to still allow that trip.
If you're insistent you need to have it, and you're willing to pay more for it, then go
ahead, but there's also alternative modes of transportation.
So if a vehicle is not available, there's nothing to say you can't call Uber or Lyft
to take a trip with them as well, and so if you go to any major city or where there's
a major event happening, you walk out, there's usually fixed route, there's taxi cabs, there's
all different modes of transportation, it's a healthy way for a rider to be able to make
a choice of how -- is money more important to me, savings, or do I need to make that
trip immediately, and if so, I have multiple options on how to get around a city, and I
think all of those things go into healthy planning.
Lots to debate and discuss.
There's a lot to unpack when you start talking about service planning, and that was not my
intent today.
Sure, sure.
Yeah.
I did have just one other question.
You've already sort of expressed your decision on this point, but I just say I kind of couldn't
quite let it go that you were saying -- well, let me just ask a part of the question.
Would it be your intent to be able to take some feedback to your update from us and as
potentially to share with the Board of Laws, we've got a board representative here, too,
but just the reason I ask that is you said you didn't think it would be appropriate to
share information here that it wasn't shared with the board yet, but if your intent is
to have, you know, comment, filter up, then why would you do that, right?
Because once it goes to the board and it's acted on, then, you know, where's the opportunity
to potentially, you know --
Well, I don't have the data to share at this point.
Oh, well, that's a different matter.
Okay.
The consultants -- I'm sorry if I was unclear, but the consultants are still parsing through
the data, and they will be coming back with recommendations, but it's just not available
at this time.
What we're showing you is data, but it will give you a sense for where we're going.
What the issues are, anyway.
Yeah, okay.
And again, I would caution any decision-making to be made because we're talking about a month's
worth of data, and we're very, very early on the service.
Any questions about this before we move on?
I'm ready to let you get back on track.
Let's see.
Okay.
So I'm going to rifle through some metrics and trends just so that you can kind of see.
Again, this data in yellow were the GoZone trips in September.
If you were to see the October/November data -- and bear in mind, we have to provide the
presentation earlier, about a week and a half, I think, before this meeting.
So information that I'm sharing with board even in a weekly report may not be readily
available for this meeting because we have to submit it beforehand.
But I will say that the October data actually almost shows an inverse where you'll see the
yellow outpace in the number of rides that we have on fixed route.
Now, as I've mentioned before, with fixed route, we've had on-time performance issues.
We've had lack of labor.
We've had a lot of things that we can shape differently as we move forward.
But this is an idea.
This is total by-day GoZone, and you can see by the day of the week how the travel patterns
and demands change ridership by route.
So we have information here for Route 1 and all the other routes, 1 through 7, and then
by the day of the week and by time of day.
Time of day is important because there are portions of the day on almost every route,
for the exception of Route 1, where we actually see that 10 passengers per hour being achieved.
But it's not the whole day.
It's through a portion of the day.
So that starts providing some insight to how we might shape fixed route and how fixed route
and GoZone might work together.
This is an interesting way to look at the trip patterns and travel patterns.
So every little dot or heat map on this slide is a pickup, if you will, from GoZone in the
month of September.
If we were to aggregate September, October, and the first week of November, you'd probably
see very similar patterns, just the map would just start getting hotter and hotter and you
wouldn't see specific dots, you'd just see a big red heat map.
Overlaid on that is a specific route.
So you can see of all the dots that were trips on GoZone, how many of those are actually
on the alignment of the fixed route.
So some of them are, but the majority of them aren't.
So this starts to indicate that, well, wait a minute, some of these trips are new trips.
They're not necessarily cannibalizing fixed route.
So it starts to inform, and then if you look at the length, and I will say by and large,
most of our fixed routes are very long, and when you have a long route, it means that
you're on a vehicle sometimes for a very long time.
So one of the things that we would naturally want to do is to improve the frequency, to
address labor shortages, is we'd probably want to see, well, now that we have GoZone,
it can complement, how do we take these very long legs, shorten those up, allow GoZone
to feed a fixed route service so that we can then increase the frequency of the fixed route
service and have our labor force that we currently have not affected because they're still operating
some fixed routes.
So you can kind of see how we're thinking about life before and after.
And I'm going to rifle through some of these fairly quickly.
Not spend so much time on the right-hand side because, again, those metrics aren't as relevant
the first few months as they will be in the future, but the travel patterns and where
you're seeing the pickup and drop-offs tend to be fairly consistent.
This is route three.
You can see out this far leg, it's not heavily traveled with fixed route, but we also don't
see that many trips, at least in the first month or so, coming from that area.
So this would argue that maybe truncating the route more closely into the center might
make some sense.
And that's, I think, the process that the consultants are going through and then looking
at, well, are there other places that the route might need to maneuver through to get
better performance?
And again, route four is a very, very long route.
Probably needs, if we're going to, if the board's desire is to retain routes, this probably
would need to be broken into a couple of pieces.
Along the top is University Drive.
What's interesting about this, I'll just spend a little bit of time, if you just look at
the heat map, this is UNT in here.
So you can see a lot of likely students are using GoZone price at 75 cents to take a lot
of trips that aren't necessarily along the route.
You can see there's certain portions of the route that are not heavily traveled.
It might be because there's another form of travel, the density might not be there.
But along, certainly along University, you can see that there is some competition going
on between GoZone and FixRoute.
And so those are things that you would naturally look at and say, well, why do we have two
modes of service competing against each other?
Is there a better way to entice people to use one versus the other?
And so that's where things like, do we present, and I'm not saying that this is the plan,
but do we want to present--
Just for illustration.
Just for illustrative purposes, do we present multiple options, or do we present the option
that's most efficient, or do we use pricing to help people have a choice?
Just for illustration, right?
That might be one where you'd say, what would the dynamics be if there were a frequent shuttle
back and forth?
You have a frequent shuttle, it's free, or it's priced less expensively than a van.
And I think even via, with all their experience, will likely suggest something like that would
be my guess.
But you can see that there's a lot of trips happening in and around the University, some
around the mall, along University Drive on 380, and then through the heart here is TWU.
And so you can see how people are tending to use the system.
And that travel pattern kind of holds true.
We're just going to move it around.
Route 6 goes from the DDTC straight up, it used to be Bell, I believe it's going up Locust
now, and then up to Discovery Park, and it's a heavily traveled route.
I don't think there'd be many modifications suggested to that.
But there's quite a few students at TWU and UNT that are finding access and enjoying the
new service.
But I think fixed route does a very good job of being able to carry more people in a cost-effective
manner on that route.
Route 7 is our highest performing route.
It certainly continues to look like it's achieving well over 10 passengers per hour the majority
of the day.
And so wouldn't expect a lot of change there.
And this is Route 21 in Lewisville and Route 22.
And so you can see how we're looking at parts of the day.
You'll notice that in a lot of these routes, there's a significant amount of ridership
in the midday.
So transit typically looks at travel patterns.
The peak is usually from 6 a.m. to about 9 a.m. pre-COVID, and then roughly 4 p.m. to
about 6 37 p.m., so about 4 hours in the morning, 4 hours in the afternoon.
Since COVID, we've actually seen the inverse, much smaller numbers, but there's a lot more
utilization during the middle of the day, which means that the people aren't taking
transit right now.
For business purposes, going into down, down Dallas or the like, they're using it to go
to school.
It's retail, it's a lot of different types of trips that typically you would see during
a normal situation.
Under normal circumstances, you'd actually see the peaks grow significantly higher.
And what we're seeing in the middle of the day is what people continuously do.
And so what you're seeing is those important trips that people need to go to the grocery
store, go to the doctor's offices, all those different things, that's what you're seeing
as the core that's driving the demand and the ridership day after day, week after week.
I recall Mr. Polster making a similar observation about highway traffic during, you know, under
COVID that people working at home, so it's kind of when do they get to the point where
they need to get out and get something done or, you know, so it is the inverse.
Well, I think it's important that everybody remember that we're still in a pandemic situation,
right?
So we're analyzing all this data with surgical precision, but we're doing that within a very
abstract time when travel patterns can continue to change.
So we're going to be making...
Let's set it for all time right now then.
Pardon me?
Well, let's set it for all time.
Right.
And so that's what I want to show you as far as the data, and that we're getting a lot
more forensic around the data because we have more, so we're actually...
The next time I present, we'll show those midday travel, the peak, the demand.
You'll see that there's certainly parts of time where fixed route is getting closer and
closer to that 10 passengers per hour.
On some of these routes, we've actually seen in the month of October a ridership growing
on some of them and hitting or getting really close to that 10 passenger per hour.
So that gives us an idea of, all right, so there's times where fixed route is efficient.
The length of the trips are probably too long.
We don't have enough operators to operate that service effectively anyway, so there's
some options for us to consider, and we're looking forward to getting a lot of that data
back from the consultants in short order and starting to share that.
So next steps.
We're going to continue to collect the data, we'll evaluate the factors that we just talked
about.
We have the December 2nd board meeting.
If there's a decision or interest in continuing to advance the routes, then someone will need
to make a motion to do that, but as it stands right now, the board has these options all
available.
Of course, we know about the elimination, but we can continue to run the routes as is
or we can modify them, and as you can see, the data starts telling you some things about
what we might choose to do as a DCTA board.
We'll also sit down with UNT and start having discussions with them about some of the travel
patterns, how their investments are made with the shuttles, and see if there's interest
for them as well to take out some of their less productive routes and maybe move some
of that over to a different model.
So we've had a contract with them that runs 10 years, but I think there's interest from
UNT.
They were very interested to see what was happening with GoZone, very interested to
see how their students were going to potentially use it.
We haven't had any discussions about GoZone today, but once the board feels comfortable
in how we're shaping the transit system for DCTA and the Connect system, we'll start having
conversations with UNT as well.
I keep checking you in my peripheral vision, Councilman, to see that.
Just a briefing item, the Castle Hills is being, I believe it's already been annexed
by the City of Louisville.
We will, there was a request by the City of Louisville to start providing connectivity
to the GoZone, and we're going to do that on January 19th.
Speaking UNT, is there going to be a change in their own policy in terms of whether students
can just show their ID and ride?
That policy has not changed.
So they pay a fee, an annual fee, to ride Connect.
They show their ID and they can ride the Connect system.
It's free to the student, the university pays for that.
With the potential decision to discontinue the Connect service, UNT is rethinking what
they would do with that amount of money.
I believe it's $50,000 that they pay.
So would they put that in additional service?
So they're waiting for us to figure out what we're going to do with our fixed route service
and then determine what they want to do with the money that we're paying in through the
contract.
There's no proposed changes to date on the UNT service.
If anything, they're looking at additional, potentially adding a small shuttle route.
It's important to note that they subsidize or they pay for their service, but they're
considered public routes, and that's important to note so that when you look at these heat
maps and we talk about maybe eliminating a route because it's not productive, it's not
that there's not service there, it's just it's always been thought of as UNT routes,
but they're open to the public and DCTA provides a portion of the funding for that, so they're
routes too and people can use them.
So there's plenty of fixed route coverage.
When we come back to the Mobility Committee in the future, I've already given some direction
to also show the university route so we get a full picture of where there's access, mobility
access moving forward.
So that's the briefing item.
I'm happy to answer any additional questions you might have.
Yes.
Yeah, I want to briefly address what you just said about UNT routes being open to the public.
I think it might have been Eva was talking to me just last week about, was it you that
was turned away from Eva?
On the number 8 bus, which is, yeah.
So that's, there may be a communication issue with the drivers.
I'm not sure what you're speaking about.
Oh, sorry.
So Eva has been turned away from riding UNT routes on several occasions because the drivers
were under the impression that the UNT routes were restricted to UNT students.
So there may be just a communication issue.
That's certainly a communication issue.
Okay.
Yeah.
And that's inaccurate, right?
Like they should be accepting fares from members of the public.
Okay.
So that just needs to be something that's better communicated maybe to drivers.
Obviously, you and I have spoken about this, but I was wondering if you could speak to
the public and Mayor Pro Tem Meltzer regarding, my perception is that one of the biggest obstacles,
if not the biggest obstacle right now to on-time performance and improving ridership on fixed
routes is the staffing issues that you've alluded to.
I was wondering if you could speak a little bit to the current state of staffing at NTMC
and what is being done to address those shortages.
So labor shortages are not unique to DCTA.
I think in every form of mode of transportation, there are labor shortages.
They're being experienced not only regionally, but nationally.
If you look at other workforces for industrial restaurants, entertainment, everybody's struggling
to find applicants and to hire.
So that's an issue, probably the biggest one.
Certainly understanding what we're going to be doing moving forward, the feedback that
I've received from the general manager is the sooner we can decide what we're going
to do, the more stability folks will have in their jobs.
I believe that if it's the desire of the DCTA board to continue to provide fixed route,
we need to shape the service because I don't see this workforce issue going away anytime
soon.
We need to make the service so that it can provide the two most critical things, is it
on time and how frequent is it because if it's not frequent enough, then I'm going
to typically look for other modes of transportation, not the service.
So I think it's critically important if there is a desire for fixed route to continue, that
the focus needs to be how do we make a system on time and frequent enough that it just becomes
second nature for people to use.
Now typically in transit, and this is across the nation, you'll work on 5, 10, 15, 20,
30, 45, and hourly frequency depending on the density, if you're in an urban canyon
in the middle of the city, you're probably going to be running 5 to 7, 8 minute, people
just walk out and they're not worried about the schedule because they know something is
going to come by any minute.
For our density and population patterns, 15, 30, 45 minutes seem to work on weekends, hourly
headways seem to be appropriate based on ridership, but there's a lot of desire from board members
to try to increase that frequency.
In order to do that, guess what, you need more vehicles and more operators.
So we can build a very aggressive schedule around on time performance and frequency,
but if we can't deliver the bodies to put in the seats, then all we're doing is we're
not delivering against the expectations of our riders because they'll open their schedule
or on their phone and they'll go stand at a bus stop and they'll be looking for a ride
that may or may not be there.
So NTMC is actively recruiting, they don't necessarily know what they're actively recruiting
to what number they're recruiting to.
So the sooner the board can make a decision, and I also think that doing this in increments
of two or three months is a big challenge for them.
They're doing a lot to incentivize operators to retain them, number one, because hiring
is one thing, just making sure that they're not leaving is another.
And there's been a fairly consistent turnover rate for a lot of various reasons, it would
take a lot of time to unpack it.
But there's folks that are leaving, so the first thing they're trying to do is make sure
that we're providing incentives for the operators to stay until we understand what's happening
with the workforce locally and regionally.
And that's been budgeted and approved through the NTMC board to provide incentives.
And it's been done, I think, on a monthly increment.
Now the budget for that is available because if you don't have a workforce that's already
been budgeted for, there's typically money available to do that.
So they're working within their budget.
So they're actively recruiting, they're trying to provide retention options, incentives
for operators.
But I think the single most important thing is just trying to understand what we're going
to be doing long-term.
- All right, thank you so much.
And I want to kind of highlight, I think, that you mentioned you were going to be bringing
to the DCTA board a couple of options that involve a budget amendment to fund fixed routes
through March or a budget amendment that will fund fixed routes through the remainder of
the fiscal year.
- Anticipating questions from the board, we're trying to prepare a few things.
The board gave direction to go back, talk to the experts, come back with recommendations
on where we might think fixed routes should stay.
Not to say that it will, but it gives the board an option.
And then, of course, the next logical question is, well, how much is that going to cost and
for how long?
So we think it's important.
We typically will set a budget for a fiscal year.
So anticipating the question of what will it take for us to get through March, what
will it take for us to get through the end of the year, we'll provide some options for
the board.
That way we don't have to wait yet another board cycle, given the fact that it's currently
budgeted through December 6, it'll give the board an option to determine how long you
want to run the service.
We'll likely have an average monthly cost in our heads.
I don't know that we can put it on paper yet, because it just really depends on workforce.
The complexity, as you're probably aware, when the universities go on summer break,
the demand for operator workforce is significantly less.
So it's just a timing thing to kind of understand what the board wants us to do and what the
ultimate impact would be on the budget.
All right.
Thank you so much.
You're welcome.
Close that?
Yeah, I got some comments and questions, too.
I think I can detect the answer, but I'm not 100% sure I've seen the data.
It seems to me like what you're seeing is -- we've definitely described incrementality,
right, that it's not drawing on necessarily the same population, but is there something
that would show total ridership is up with the two services operating?
I mean, you'd have to look year over year, but the years are weird.
We report that every month to the board.
I think the slides presentation on the slides themselves, let me see if I can minimize this.
The short answer is, yes, we can provide total ridership, and ridership is up from prior
year.
I'm never interested in the answer.
Not that I need you to prove it to me, but just like is that what you are?
Yes, we're seeing ridership growing over last year.
It's not where it was pre-COVID.
I don't think anybody is where it is pre-COVID, but we're seeing significant increases.
Across the nation, we saw anywhere from about a 50% to 80% decrease in ridership.
We were probably closer to 75, 76% on rail in the high 70s, and bus were now somewhere
around 60% of where we were pre-COVID, and continuing to grow every month.
The beauty of what we have done, whether it's been depending on your personal view, is we've
done exactly what the rest of the nation hopefully is doing, which is responding to significant
changes in consumer behavior, travel patterns, a lot more people are working from home.
The CARES Act, the ARPA money, was provided to the Federal Transit Administration and then
parsed out to all the transit agencies.
One was to try to bolster and keep the transit agencies providing service, but the other
portion of that was innovates to respond to the changes that are happening across our
nation.
I think we've done that exceptionally well.
What we need to do now is focus on how do we make what we've done more efficient.
I think from an effectiveness perspective, we're certainly carrying a lot more riders
than we were.
What we're seeing is significant growth over last year, which is great, but it's not efficient.
Our fixed route isn't efficient, VIA is not efficient, and I think we have a wonderful
opportunity here to redesign our network.
Can we come back on December 2nd as staff and consultants and design a network that
we can implement in December?
Likely not, but what we can do is we can make some significant advancements in it and allow
some time for the consultants to come back with what our future designed, I won't call
it perfect, but near perfect scenario would be for our transit system to build a healthy
multimodal transit system for the future.
That's what likely staff will propose to the board.
I'll tell you, I for one am just so pleased hearing about just the thought process and
about how you might balance the two to create efficiency that there's a way to improve
the fixed route so that it may end up costing less and arriving more frequently and it may
have a better paid driver.
As a result, as you figure out how do you get the workforce where you need it to be,
I think that's at least a potential direction.
I'm very optimistic if the board is going to listen to the data.
I was very pleased with the direction the board gave at our last board meeting which
was we as a board do not want to be-- and you were there so please correct me if I'm
paraphrasing incorrectly, but we don't want to be in the transit planning business.
We'll leave that to the experts, come back with recommendations the board can look at
as we deliberate and try to move the agency forward.
So I'm optimistic as well.
Well, thank you for coming again and sharing all this with us.
Well, thank you for the opportunity.
Okay.
You need a break or are you okay?
I know I tend not to like check and see if people need breaks because I just get fixated.
Okay.
Item E, Receive a Report, Hold a Discussion and Approve the Mobility Committee Annual 2022
Meeting Schedule.
I saw DCTA twice.
I'm just-- you know, I have a very simple job to do here.
There's not that many items on the agenda.
So I apologize for the misdirection.
Thank you for correcting me.
There's a second DCTA related item, Item D, Receive a Report and Hold a Discussion Regarding
the City of Denton's Proposed Application for Funding under the DCTA Reinvestment Program,
et cetera.
Good morning.
And you were ready to present the correct thing anyway.
I knew you would get it right.
Yeah.
All right.
So that needs to be right there.
I'm Robin Davis.
I'm the project manager with Capital Projects and I'm going to be going over this presentation
with you this morning.
So this is to discuss the additional funding that we've now been aware that's available
for the proposed-- the 2020 year fiscal year trip funds.
Is that working?
Thank you.
So you guys just got through talking about the DCTA program.
This is for the Denton County Transportation Authority DCTA Trip Funds, which is the transportation
reinvestment program that provides financial assistance to DCTA member cities for their
long range-- if it's within their long range goals.
So I'm not going to go through every bit of that with you.
You probably all know all of that.
So in 2020, the sales tax performed much better than expected.
So it is providing an additional $906,000.
I think that this skipped a slide.
Hang on one second.
Maybe there we go.
And now it's back on that view.
Let's see.
I'm not sure how you got it off of that view in the first place.
There's one.
Thanks.
It's moving right back to the same place.
Do we have one?
Yes.
Don't know.
I'll delete it.
There we go.
Thank you.
So for 2021, we submitted projects for the 2022 available funds.
And those projects were listed below, the A Train to UNT Bike and Pedestrian Path, which
is along Sycamore.
It's a 10-foot side path down Sycamore from the DCTA train station to Welch, the All Way
Crossing Downtown Pedestrian Improvement Project, which is the diagonal crossings that will
be installed at all four intersections around the courthouse on the square, Jennings and
Alexander Elementary School's sidewalks, which is part of the Safe Routes to Schools program,
and Nettie Schultz and Pecan Creek as well.
And also Bell Sidewalk Construction, which is a sidewalk gap on the east side of Bell
Street between Hickory and Sycamore, and the Med Park sidewalk construction, which is also
a gap section over there.
Those were the projects that were submitted for those funds in 2020.
So the sales tax for that year performed better than expected.
And so we've got an additional $906,000 in funding available that we would also like
to apply to two of those projects that we've already reviewed.
It will help fully fund the construction of the All Way Crossing Downtown Pedestrian Improvements,
and it'll help reduce the city's obligation for the A Train to UNT Sycamore Side Path
Project.
And this is just an overview, the approved DCTA trip funding for those projects submitted
is in this column, $2.5 million, and the proposed additional funding of $906,000 and how it
will be applied.
So the next steps will be upon council approval on December 7th, the Grant Administration
team will submit the projects, their applications to DCTA for consideration.
It'll be placed on their next agenda.
And then we'll be sure to closely monitor all of our projects and report appropriately
per the agreement.
And staff will present for the next proposed fiscal year 2021 grant funds, which we think
will be around $3 million for the December 15 mobility meeting.
And that's that.
Does anyone have any questions?
Yeah, my apologies for my lack of familiarity with the Sycamore Project.
Can you repeat again?
It's going to be a bike and pedestrian side path, you said it was going to be eight feet
wide?
Ten feet wide.
Okay.
And is there going to be any any separation between bike and pedestrian facilities or
is it just no on Sycamore?
It's a shared path.
Okay.
Ten foot wide shared path.
And then down at Welch Street from about the existing bike path on that around Eagle North
to Hickory will be installing a bike path on Welch.
Okay.
All right.
Thank you so much.
Um, yeah, fantastic and you know, obviously there may be changes to the projected, you
know, fiscal year, this fiscal year's trip funding because of the conversation we're
about to have on December 2nd.
But yeah, thank you so much.
This is obviously great use of that trip money.
Yeah, I agree with that prioritization for what it's worth if anyone gets to talk about
it again when it comes to council.
Very good.
Thank you.
So, I don't know who who's already teed up to talk to us about meeting schedule.
Item E. Receive a report of the discussion and approve the mobility committee annual
2022 meeting schedule.
Is that you, Becky?
Thank you, Chair.
Rachel's going to share from down there.
Just wanted to take the time to go through with you the proposed schedule.
As you know, there is a ordinance that talks about specifically the times of which we were
going to meet and that it's always going to be the third Wednesday of the month at 9 a.m.
And so my hopes with the meeting today, we've reviewed and looked at the spring break calendar
for the Denton School District, also looked at some of the holiday timeframes and wanted
to propose these as the timeframes for the I'm sorry, the dates for the 2022 meetings.
There is a holiday that is the week of the 17th.
The Martin Luther King holiday is on January 17th.
But we just wanted to take that opportunity.
You'll see a difference on the March meeting as the week of the 14th through the 18th is
Denton School District spring break.
So we're proposing to go to the 23rd.
And then the other item that you will see is the week of December or week of December
12, instead of doing the third Wednesday of that month being that it's so close to Christmas
time, we were anticipating actually meeting on the 14th.
I know a couple of those are a little bit closer together than our usual span between
meetings.
But wanted to go ahead and try to lock those down and get those on everyone's calendar.
So happy to have any discussion if there's any questions.
But that was really the purpose of today is just having you have an opportunity to review
it.
Yeah, a quick glance through my 2022 calendar, which isn't very full just yet, I shows that
these look good.
Wonderful.
Yeah, I think none of these dates work for Councilmember Byrd, but she's not here so
looks good to me.
Thank you, Chair.
All righty.
Well, with that, do we need to make a motion?
All righty.
So I will request a motion please.
Okay.
I move approval of these dates.
I second.
Any discussion?
Seeing none.
All those in favor?
Aye.
Wonderful.
Thank you very much.
All right, you bet.
Item F, receive a report and hold a discussion regarding an update on sidewalk projects and
future priorities of the Department of Capital Projects/Engineering Sidewalk Work Plan.
All right.
Thank you, Nathan George, Bicycle Pedestrian and ADA Planner for the City.
I'm going to talk to you about our sidewalk work plan.
For the purposes of presentation, I included a link in our AIS for this item that will
take you to the web page that I have on the screen.
It is an ESRI story map, so we're going to walk through a lot of information.
I'm not going to read through this word for word because that's not how I present, but
the key feature that I want to highlight here is that we have a lot of data, and so this
is a good format for us to share that data in an interactive format.
I'll walk through that as we get into the presentation.
The subject is our sidewalk work plan.
How are we going to get sidewalks built around the city?
Clearly we've got a lot of need, so why are we talking about a sidewalk work plan?
Well, clearly, folks like to walk, and they prefer, generally, to walk away from cars,
and sidewalks are a facility that allows folks to do that.
It's an enjoyable way to get around, but we can't just go out tomorrow and start building
sidewalks everywhere in the city, so we do need to outline a plan for where we're going
to build sidewalks and work through that process.
I'll highlight some of the features of how we get there as we go through the presentation,
but generally speaking, folks do enjoy walking, and we need to have a plan.
We do have a long-range plan that guides overall what our vision is for the city, and that's
our mobility plan.
It outlines where we're going to accommodate cars, bikes, and pedestrians, all the travel
modes, and that's a very great plan for the future, but a plan for sidewalks specifically
is how we're going to deliver those projects that are necessary to get sidewalks into our
different parts of our community.
I just wanted to acknowledge that we do have that plan.
It takes plans like this that offer that more fine-grained detail of where we're actually
going to build sidewalks, so that's how clearly, as we're looking at our streets, there are
needs, and where do we need sidewalks?
Generally, as I've spoken with this committee before when I first joined the city, it's
generally preferred to have sidewalks on both sides of our urban streets.
There are exceptions to that rule.
Maybe a lower-volume street, we don't need to have a sidewalk on both sides of the street.
At a low enough volume, maybe a sidewalk isn't even needed.
At a low enough stress level, not a lot of cars on the street, it's comfortable to walk,
but generally speaking, we want sidewalks on both sides of the street, and then there
are some character differences, so a street may be more rural, and so maybe instead of
a sidewalk, we might prefer a side path or shoulders.
There are varying levels of pedestrian accommodation that need to be acknowledged, but generally
speaking, as we talk about city streets, we want to have facilities on both sides of the
street.
Another important acknowledgement is not every street in the city is a city street.
We do own the streets that are shown in blue on this map, and I'll click here to take
that icon away.
The blue streets are city streets, but there are also streets that are owned by the state,
Texas or TxDOT, shown in red, and then there are also streets that are owned by Denton
County, shown in purple.
That's an important acknowledgement that just like we can't go out and start building sidewalks
tomorrow everywhere in the city, we also need to work with our partners as we're looking
at those streets to make sure that everybody's of a common understanding before we get started
on sidewalk projects.
I'm going to pause here for a moment just to highlight some of the features, the interactive
features of the mapping.
First, there is the ability to search in the city using the icon that looks like a magnifying
glass so we can look at an address in the city, and it'll zoom you right there.
There's also an interactive legend that allows you to turn on or off any specific layers
of interest.
It's a really handy feature that you can isolate where we have TxDOT or county or city roads.
That's a feature that's used in this map, but it will be a bit more beneficial in subsequent
maps.
I just wanted to highlight some of those features for anybody who wants to interact with that
tool.
All right, so how did the staff develop this sidewalk park plan?
This has been an iterative process.
It's not something that's just happened overnight.
Sidewalks have been in development for years.
So initially, a lot of these projects were identified and then screened through a process
that we call the Pedestrian Potential Index, or PPI.
I'm certain you've probably heard of that before, but just a reminder, Pedestrian Potential
Index is a measure of where we'd expect to see high levels of pedestrian activity.
We also recently completed an ADA transition plan, which gives us a lot of robust data.
This entire platform's built using that ADA transition data, which is really rich data.
I'll show you that once we get into the maps.
The PPI is a way that we can look at these areas where needs occur and then start looking
at where the needs align with where those gaps are.
So I'm going to go through these Pedestrian Potential Index indicators, and then we'll
dive into the data.
All right, so to rank each sidewalk segment, we looked at a variety of factors.
Some of these factors have changed over time.
I'll give you one highlight towards the end, but to walk you through each one specifically,
the first is major streets.
So pedestrians tend to travel like drivers in the most direct route.
Our public major streets tend to be the most direct and connected routes.
So each of the sidewalk needs was given a point if they occurred along a major street.
So these are our like Loop 288, McKinney Street, Carrable Boulevard major streets in the city.
Schools.
So schools and students represent a large percentage of our population who aren't able
to drive.
So our students are certainly potential users, and as they want to express some independence,
walk to school, that sort of thing, they're certainly a user that we want to accommodate
safely.
So sidewalks around schools, specifically our great public schools, that is definitely
a need.
So we've given a point to them.
Government facilities.
So this is a factor in our ADA transition plan, and we want to acknowledge that as we're
looking at needs for sidewalks to make sure that those public facilities, our city buildings,
the park trails, places like that, public libraries, those are places people will want
to go to.
They're public assets, so we want to make sure they're well connected.
And then there's everything else.
The points of interest is how I labeled this, but effectively this is your medical office
buildings, your shopping, dining, all the other places that people can go to.
We have a really rich data set around that as well.
So making sure that we acknowledge as people want to get out of their community and walk
to places, these are the places that really attract our pedestrian activity.
And then the final data point to highlight is safety.
So pedestrian collisions tell us where something isn't working.
And so it draws our attention to a need to address safety and make sure that folks can
get through walking on city streets safely.
So we certainly want to look at those locations specifically to see is there a need to address
some disconnect.
So the process of developing this work plan initially, like I said, it was very manual
of looking at a need and identifying a rank and then pairing all of those identified needs
to develop a capital program or the sidewalk work plan.
So everything, you add up all the checks, you get a number of the PPI score, and then
make sure that you have budget to build.
No, we already have a process.
You just respond to the squeakiest wheel.
I'm kidding.
Keep going.
Never mind.
So that's, you know, that was the process that was used before.
We're going to talk through how we're accelerating that by using this rich data that we've got
through the ADA transition plan.
So I have two maps that I'll walk through next.
I wanted to pause for a moment and give you an opportunity if you have any questions,
you can go through this methodology part.
Initially, if not, I can jump right into the data.
All right, let's do it.
All right.
So first, we're going to look at the current projects in the 2021 to 2024 time frame.
So these are projects that are currently ongoing in delivery, right?
Some are in construction, some have been completed.
And then there are those out years that haven't gone to construction yet, but have been designed
or will be designed in the next few years.
It's important to acknowledge that the purpose of this presentation is to talk about new
sidewalks and not ADA transitions.
So if it's an existing sidewalk, that's not specifically discussed in this presentation,
but we are completing a parallel process to look at sidewalk needs of our existing but
out of date or out of standard facilities.
So that's something we're looking at separately.
All right.
So first, our sidewalk projects.
So this is sidewalk projects around the city.
Again, like I said, this interactive map is really the feature of it that's really helpful
is you can isolate data that you want to look at.
In the case of projects, you may not want to see the existing, so turning that off is
really helpful.
And that allows us to look at where are these sidewalk projects around the city.
We can also turn off the trails, but we included trails to show that connectivity with other
existing facilities around the city.
And then you really get an idea of where are those projects being delivered.
It's also these projects, some of them are standalone.
Some of the projects are also where we've identified where an existing capital project
is delivering new sidewalks.
So wanted to highlight that as well.
When I talked about the richness of the data, a lot of times when we've delivered, when
we talk about projects, we're looking at them as like a center line mile.
So here's the center of the street and we're going to build a sidewalk from this street
to that street.
But you can't really understand kind of which side of the street, where is that sidewalk
going to be.
And this data is actually, where does the sidewalk start?
Where does it end?
It was built around all of those existing features.
So ramps are included in that data.
So now we can really look at does a sidewalk get built on the east side of the road or
the west or both.
So it's really helpful to have that sort of level of data.
So then as we look at cost information on a staff level, we can see which side of the
street, how much sidewalk is it, how many ramps, how many driveways, the nitty gritty
details that we need to look at for cost.
But it's also very beneficial from a public perspective.
If we're talking about a project, say the Belle Avenue sidewalk along the east side
of the street, it's clear the west side has a sidewalk and the east side is where we're
delivering a project.
And that's really helpful information if you want to get into the specifics.
How did all this data get in there?
Sorry?
Yeah.
How did all this data get in there?
It looks like naturally everything is there.
It was a lot of hard work done by our consultants who delivered the transition plan.
And then I've been playing with the data pretty much ever since I got here.
Cool.
And yes, it's a rich, lots of data.
So hopefully that gives you an idea of where we're currently working.
These are where the projects that are currently being delivered over the next handful of years,
we have a set-aside capital amount of our bond funds that go into these capital projects.
And so this is where those projects are being delivered along with existing capital projects,
some of our street widenings that are delivering sidewalks as well.
Moving on.
So the next step is to identify where we're going to focus our attention in the years,
the next set of funded projects.
And so the PPI, the purpose is to look at where do we have the greatest potential for
pedestrian activity that allows us as staff to look at those areas specifically and try
to identify where should we allocate resources to build the next round of sidewalks.
Could you remind us, and I'm sure you just said it 10 minutes ago, but what drives the
PPI, what data inputs drive it?
Yeah.
So it's a nearness, a proximity of those different variables like schools and parks
and safety, like where crashes occurred.
So we take all of this data and layer it with a buffer to each of those elements.
So it'd be like, you know, city hall and within set distance to like a quarter mile, typically,
and any of these features that are within that quarter mile that would get a point.
So it's just a GIS analysis where you say, I want to know everything, every sidewalk
that's within the set distance, and then I give it points, accumulate the points, and
it gives you the PPI score.
So proximity to things on my drive traffic or pedestrian traffic, and then how does the
safety piece feed into it?
So each one of those variables gets points, gets a ranked point.
Actually if I click on one of these lines, I think it would give you each of those scores.
So we have mobility major, these are major streets, so this particular street was along
a major route, it's an existing sidewalk gap, it was within a quarter mile of a government
facility, there are points of interest, and there was a crash that occurred within a tenth
of a mile.
And so the accumulation of all of those drives up to the PPI score of five for the segment
that I just identified.
Really cool.
So it's sort of this layering of a lot of data and a lot of calculation, and then the
results yielded are these PPI scores, which the data, these are just numbers.
We could certainly play with the methodology, we could apply weighting, but...
I just want to understand what you're doing, that's great.
Looking at the results, I've been pretty happy to see, you know, one of the things that I'm
looking for as I look at this data is to make sure that it's not inequitably applying a
lot of priority to downtown or to a place that, you know, we don't want to see the data
driving us just to one spot, and there's certainly a range of areas that we see are higher priorities,
some along our major streets, some in areas where we have a combination of, like, parks
and schools, so that gives us a little more priority of our neighborhood areas that we
might want to prioritize for sidewalks, and really the goal is that it tells us where
to focus our most direct attention, these higher PPI scores, but then, so I'll move
into the rest of the presentation and then we can jump back to this map if it would help
for discussion.
You know, what's next, what do we do with all this data?
So the data tells a story, but we still have to apply some critical thinking to determine
where to build the next set of sidewalks, the first part of that is just identifying
or the project selection.
So typically you run this level of analysis, look at the highest scoring, and then start
to apply some other factors to identify where do we want to focus on the next set of sidewalks.
Once we've identified a few sidewalks that we think are probably our next priorities,
we still have to go through a degree of feasibility evaluations that's looking at, do we have
right of way, are we going to run into significant obstacles, things like major utilities that
would require relocation, would it be necessary to build a wall, things that are very costly
improvements.
It's not to say that we won't still work in an area that has a lot of those challenges,
but it's, you know, we iterate a lot as we work through developing programs like this,
so you may identify a significant challenge and find a way to work around that challenge
by, you know, this image example comes from Carroll Boulevard.
We may be able to work on a parallel street if we're in a gridded network of streets
and accommodate that travel, you know, very short distance, a block away, so, you know,
looking at feasibility and balancing priorities and making sure that we're achieving that
connectivity objective.
Once we've identified segments that are feasible, we still need to go through a design process
because, again, we can't just go out with shovels and dump trucks and start building
things, so we still need to go through a design process, make sure that everything is balanced
from a budget perspective, so we're looking at projects and making sure that we're identifying
priorities and building out a program that fits within a set budget.
And just to give you guys an idea of what all of this means, we're a little cut off
here.
Let's see if I can isolate that, there we go.
So the summary, what's the overall need?
So across the city we have almost 450 miles of sidewalk needs, this is just city, it doesn't
include the tech stop or county roadways, but if you break that down into the PPI scores,
you see that the areas that have a really high potential pedestrian activity level are
small numbers, about a half mile on our highest ranked sidewalks based on this evaluation,
then five miles and it continues to grow as we reduce the priority.
So that is the ultimate goal of an evaluation like this is to have small numbers at the
top so we can focus our attention in those areas.
We certainly would pick up any lower ranked sidewalks that may provide a mobility benefit,
connecting a network so we don't leave gaps, that sort of thing, but the outcome of this
process was really that we can focus in these higher ranked areas and look for the sidewalk
segments that we can really achieve those desired outcomes.
So that to me says we've got some good results from this analysis, it's not to say we'll
just go build the sixes and fives tomorrow, but that's where we're gonna look at first.
And then to wrap it all up, this is information that was put out on Discuss Denton to share
with the public where we're working on sidewalk projects, so the goal of this presentation
or these materials is to continue to drive that conversation.
Folks can see where those sidewalk projects are and now we have a map that shows exactly
where they are, which side of the street, where they start and end, but also kind of
where are the priorities, what's scoring the best, and so continuing to drive everyone
to Discuss Denton to continue this dialogue because we talk a lot about living documents,
this is living data, we're gonna use this data in an ongoing process to identify projects
and deliver the next round of sidewalk improvements around the city, and then we'll have also
a conversation around budget and how we're gonna accelerate getting more sidewalks built
throughout the city.
That concludes the presentation, I'll be happy to answer questions or dive into any of this
material as you see fit.
- Yeah, so first of all, thank you so much for this, this is, what a fantastic visualization
of how these priorities are working out and I think it's very clear, should be very clear
to the community now that this isn't happening in a haphazard way, that there's a lot of
thought going into how the city is prioritizing these sidewalk projects.
I'm sure that there are, if there's anybody out there listening, I know this isn't like
a council meeting, so I don't know how many folks might be out there listening, but folks
out there listening might be wondering and I'm certainly thinking, it would be great
to see, if we could see an expansion of these projects coming up the next few years or an
acceleration of the timeline and you bring up very important points about how capital
projects are inherently slow moving because there are so many steps that have to be worked
through in order to make them happen.
And of course, funding capital projects are inherently expensive.
The city has to purchase right of way in order to get the right to build sidewalks in certain
areas and then the design and the construction requires a great deal of funding.
I was wondering if you could speak a little bit to the sources of funding that are typically
drawn upon for sidewalk projects.
Are they different from the sources of funding for other capital projects?
Can you kind of give a thousand foot view of funding for these projects?
I may defer to our leadership.
I can tell you that we do have a set aside amount of funds for the sidewalk projects
that I highlighted in that map, which I believe is $2 million out of a bond fund.
And anything beyond that, I'll let Rachel speak up.
Sure.
So we actually have several sources that fund sidewalks.
Of course, anytime we have a major roadway reconstruction project, sidewalks are going
to be a component of that roadway CIP.
We also had $12 million included in the 2019 bond program, specifically for sidewalks.
And in addition to that, we're augmenting it with other sources, including what Robin
just presented on the TRIP program and then other Safe Routes to School cog-funded projects.
So we do have several different sources, but if it's tied to a roadway project, we use
the project budget and the source for those funds to include the sidewalk as well.
All right.
Thank you so much.
And for the public listening, that's franchise fees, impact fees are the primary funding
sources for roadway capital improvement projects, right?
There are some impact fees that are used for roadway projects, but the majority of the
projects that we're delivering right now are through capital programs.
And a lot of the projects that we have currently are through the bond actual programs, so the
2012, 2014, and 2019 bond program.
Thank you.
So if I may offer a suggestion, and I concur with the impressive amount of Iowa option
in this.
It's very slick and I think makes it very accessible.
On the map, and I appreciate the fact very much that it's analytically driven.
And with the kind of objective criteria, I've made a little joke before about, "No, we just
respond to the squeakiest wheel," and that used to actually be the method.
So it's much fairer to kind of apply arm's length standards.
I do, however, notice that Southeast Denton, which unfortunately has a history within the
lifetime of people living in the city, of some pretty heinous neglect on the capital
investment front.
And I would just say, it's unfortunate that Councilmember Burt couldn't be here today,
but it would be worth taking the extra step to sit with her, just see if there's anything
that was overlooked that might be a driver of priority, because it kind of stands out
as being like all yellow, all low priority.
And there might be factors that maybe, you know, you might need a kind of closer understanding
of what drives activity at the neighborhood level.
So I think it's just worth the extra step to check in.
Yeah, to offer a few thoughts on that, I mentioned that when I was going through those priority
indicators that one data point that was left out is transit, which is, you know, clearly
we want to be prioritizing accessibility around our fixed route transit.
We've already heard there are a lot of questions around what that's going to look like in the
future.
So that's a layer of evaluation that's not in this current analysis.
And we want to revisit that once we understand what transit looks like after DCTA's stamped
that out.
You know, you've identified sort of points of interest in government buildings as drivers,
and they may be under they may, in fact, be under invested in that neighborhood, you know,
in points of interest in government things, but other things might drive traffic.
I don't know that there are any that there are any factors like that.
Just more of the extra step.
That's all I'd say.
But and I take your point on, you know, that that being one, but even what's the point
of interest, you know, I just don't know.
You know, I would just add to that, you know, obviously, there's a lot that's up in the
air with the fixed bus routes, but the downtown transit center isn't going anywhere, right?
So that's I mean, that should absolutely be is that considered a point of interest or
public facility under your current framework?
It is.
Yeah.
The points of interest is probably 4000 or more points of data.
So it's, you know, it's a broad category, if you look at a heat map, it sort of follows
the major roads and you can it's sort of logical, it gets drilled down to home based residences.
So it's such a rich data set that we actually can start to peel out what's the most important
and maybe give a little higher weighting to some of those.
Another layer that would be nice to look at as the data becomes available is the next
round of census data, because that will give us the opportunity to look at maybe some measures
of equity.
So as that data comes out through the Census Bureau, that'll be another layer that we can
look at or another lens that we can apply.
And then there are some other ways we might look at, you know, Safe Routes to School is
certainly a tool that Rachel touched on that we could look at specifically based on that
funding source.
So we'll look at those at funding and pair that with need so we can identify projects
based on the funding source.
Churches come to mind as possibly drivers of pedestrian traffic?
That was that was in the presentation as a point of interest.
Yeah, churches, daycare centers, there's a lot of data in that part of the data set.
And I just want to, I guess, add my support to Council Member Mayor Pro Tem Meltzer's.
Nobody is ever going to just call you Mayor Pro Tem on the first.
Yeah, no, that's actually the title, Council Member Mayor Pro Tem.
I just want to add support to Mayor Pro Tem's point about, you know, looking at equity and
taking into account those communities, particularly Southeast Denton that have historically been
under-resourced and neglected when it came to capital projects.
Yeah, one anecdote I can share because we are, like I said, looking at the ADA transition
priorities is that we had a sidewalk, part of our Southeast Denton neighborhood rebuilding,
and we had a segment of sidewalk that was really poor condition that's being delivered
as part of that capital project is to repair or replace that sidewalk and break up standards.
So there's a good alignment of this data that's not just with our new sidewalks, but it's
even catching some of those existing sidewalks that are in desperate need of repair, so I'm
seeing really good alignment with the data and really excited to start using that as
we work into our capital projects throughout the city, these sidewalk needs.
So that's been an exciting development, even as recently as two weeks ago.
Is this your first presentation before Ability Committee?
I think it is.
I mean, other than being introduced?
A very brief presentation before this first full presentation.
Yeah, okay.
Well, congratulations on your first full presentation.
I just wanted to mention that we're very pleased with the effort that Nathan and Robin Davis
has also put a lot of effort into putting this together.
I really enjoyed the way that Nathan is presenting this information.
He'll also be presenting this same presentation to the Committee on Persons with Disability
tomorrow.
And then I wanted to mention that on January 4th, and we will be having a work session
on the sidewalk work plan, the ADA transition plan, and the park trails plan.
So it'll be an overall conversation.
Wanted to bring up the 2019 bond program, as specifically you have spoken about the Southeast
Indian neighborhood.
Nathan has been a part of the design review team.
As you know, Seth Garcia is leading that bond program, and Nathan has been involved in a
lot of the conversations and questions.
He just mentioned that.
I also want to note for the bond programs, I just want to remind you that the bond programs
actually are specifically related to street programs.
So the funding that will be added to do sidewalks comes from those $2 million that are, you
know, they're separate funding buckets, so that comes from that $2 million per year.
And the first two years of that are allocated, as Nathan mentioned, on the program.
He's currently working through.
And the project, Robin's actually delivering those projects.
So just wanted to bring to your attention that, you know, we're hoping and trying our
best to make projects from a holistic approach, especially with starting with that Southeast
Indian neighborhood.
It's been very exciting to look at sidewalks and water sewer, street lighting.
You know, there's a lot of things that go into evaluating all of those project sidewalks,
definitely one.
But there is a limited amount of funding in that overall program, and that's the reason
why Nathan wanted to show you at the end, you know, the amount of actual sidewalk that
actually needs to be installed throughout the city, and that the amount currently allocated
is just $2 million per year, so that total of $12 million.
So we're going to do our best in every angle we can to fill in those gaps on some of those
high traffic areas, use the data that Nathan's put together with the PPI scores and the research
that they're actually doing on the ground out in the field to make sure that we're providing
the best connectivity we can with the funds available.
Great.
You know, this is not going to make you any friends on staff.
We're all used to doing normal PowerPoints, and now, oh, great, new guy does this really
slick colorful thing.
Well, and to the point about limited funding, again, for any, you know, citizens who might
be out there listening, it's, of course, the job of council to come up with funding.
And if we want to see these projects expanded or accelerated, then it's going to be incumbent
upon council to come up with that funding.
Point taken.
I would also add to that point, and certainly want to commend Becky and Rachel and Nathan
and everyone on the efforts for this plan, and specifically on the conversations for
Southeast Denton and the work that's gone into that.
This year, as we go into the budget, we're going to place a priority on the capital side,
bring a more formalized capital plan to you for consideration earlier in the budget process
so we can have a robust conversation, not just what are we doing next year, what are
we doing in the next five years and beyond, and some of that will lend into some of the
conversations later as we even think about what does a future bond program look like.
So we're really trying to take that long-term view and place a different emphasis on our
capital program this year in the budget process.
Looking forward to that.
Thank you so much.
Thanks for your time.
All right.
So we're up to item G. Did I miss anything?
We're up to item G. Okay, staff report.
Go ahead.
And council member Byrd specifically wanted me to make sure we hear about both more permanent
measures as well as, you know, swift measures to address speeding concerns on Curley and
Moores.
Sure.
Thank you very much.
Becky Devaney.
I just wanted to take the time to go through several of the items that have come up from
between the last meeting and this meeting, in the October meeting.
So the first question you just mentioned, Mayor Pro Tem, Chair, about the more permanent
measures to address speeding concerns on the Curley and Moores street.
I will mention that many staff were in attendance last Thursday night at a meeting with the
Suddenon neighborhood and council member Byrd where several additional questions have been
asked.
Staff is currently evaluating, and I apologize, there's a mistake.
It's not Malone Street.
It's actually Moore Street that's written in that paragraph for a potential roadway diet.
So that's one of the things that staff is currently evaluating is the possibility of
actually narrowing Moore Street and providing for additional parking, bike lanes, and actually
using street marking to provide that one-way traffic in each direction, along with looking
and evaluating for additional speed limit signs and some of those driver feedback or
notification signs in that area.
Other traffic calming measures that are being looked at specifically, I know this states
that we currently have no plans to modify the configuration of Curley Street.
That is correct.
But I will mention that, and I apologize, my voice has been coming in and out since
last week, we don't have current plans to modify the configuration, but there are several
folks in the room today.
We have folks from our fire department, also from our traffic operations department, and
then also engineering that will mention to you that we are looking at one of the major
themes that came from the southeastern meeting as we've evaluating our traffic calming devices.
And there are definitely some concerns with building actual speed bumps as they're damaging
the fire trucks.
And so we're looking at traffic cushions and several other measures in some of these
areas where we've conducted a speed study.
It does appear that there are enforcement-related issues that need to be considered, but then
also that we can look at some alternative measures such as those traffic calming.
So we're taking all of those things into consideration.
Unfortunately, we published this document prior to having that opportunity to make some
additional comments, but did want to bring up the fact that we are hearing the community,
we understand their concerns, and we are evaluating Morris and Curley to a little bit greater
degree based on some of the additional feedback we received last Thursday.
The next item was talking about the next proposed bond package to council.
I think David really kind of just touched on this item, but we're currently working
through and assessing potential projects for a future bond program.
That election would be something that would happen in fiscal year '22, '23 during that
budget process like David just mentioned.
The CIP budget planning process, we've already had one meeting.
We have another meeting, I believe it's next week, to start that kickoff of the CIP.
And then officially we'll begin through our finance capital administration team in the
December time frame under the direction of Cassie Ogden.
And that will be presented to council during that budget process, but wanted to let you
know that we're going ahead and beginning some of those next phases and next steps.
The next item I will mention is the, this was one that council member Bird brought up,
the curbing signage and tree concerns at Janey Street.
So I'm happy to report that the entire length of Janey Street is in the 2019 bond program
and Mr. Seth Garcia will be delivering that.
The curb and tree issues will be considered during those actual design sections.
And we will be coordinating with traffic operations to install that temporary signage for the
area until the construction is complete.
And for those of you who don't know who the traffic operations team is, Mr. James Andrews
is in the room with us today.
And so he is the individual that's over traffic operations.
So I wanted to take a minute to recognize him.
He does a fantastic job with helping our team throughout many items that we come up with
and many different ideas.
Sometimes he wants to tell us no, but he never says no.
And I will make mention of the fact that recently we had some concerns with a particular intersection.
He actually stayed late on a Thursday night, made sure that the stop sign, temporary stop
signs were installed on a Friday morning.
So he is a definite huge asset to our team and we're very pleased to have him.
He works underneath the leadership of Daniel Kramer.
So those temporary signage we'll be looking into.
Just to talk about the street sections, it's Janey Street from Davis to McKinney, Noble
to Paisley and then Paisley to Noble.
The reason why we break it into sections is because the bond program is typically, as
you know, it's based on block.
And so I just wanted to let you know those different block sections.
And you can see a picture here that shows those trees in the middle of the roadway.
So I understand where Councilmember Byrd had some questions as it's a very interesting
area part of town.
And I would also mention with a lot of the development in the area, as you can see on
the right-hand side of that picture, there's been some new developments.
So definitely something that we're happy to be taken care of as part of the 2019 bond
program.
The next item is the Paisley Street and Roodale Street intersection curbs.
And so it was asked about the different types of curbs.
And I wanted to mention that Paisley Street at Roodale is an older section of street that
really has never had curb and gutter installed.
Staff is currently studying the potential impacts of installing curbs and gutters.
But currently, the street department does not have a plan to execute putting any curb
and gutter in or the funding identified.
I also will mention, as you know, water flows naturally across the ground.
And so if you install curb and gutter, what's sometimes hard to remember is it also will
take into consideration infrastructure that actually has to be built underneath the roadway
to collect that water and then convey it across underneath under the ground.
So just wanted to make note of that.
There was also some questions about the curb cuts and crosswalks on Hickory Creek Road to
connect the Lake Forest Park Trail and Cross Timbers Park Trail.
Those are mouthfuls.
There is no current plan to have the Lake Forest Park Trail or Cross Timbers Park Trail
connect to the Hickory Creek Road.
Pedestrians will be able to walk the Lake Forest Park Trail via the Waterside Place
by walking down the west side along Hickory Creek Road using that existing five-foot sidewalk
that will connect to the planned eight-foot sidewalk along the north side of Hickory Creek
Road.
Then, pedestrians can cross Hickory Creek Road at the planned signal at Montecito Drive.
And then they can then use the planned eight-foot sidewalk along the south side of Hickory Creek
Road that will then connect to Cross Timbers Park Trail.
The planned eight-foot sidewalk along Hickory Creek Road and the signal at Montecito is
estimated to be complete in March of 2022.
It's hard to believe that we're already saying March of 2022.
So this graphic describes what I tried to read to you, but you can see where folks will
go from Cross Timbers Park down to Hickory Creek Road, down Hickory Creek Road, across
Montecito and then back.
So it's taking you all the way down and across on one side of the roadway, you'll get to
the signalized intersection at Montecito and then travel back to the west.
The next question that was asked were details on the long-term plan for McKinney Street
from Limp 288 to Woodrow.
And obviously, Woodrow is one direction, Audra the other direction.
A roadway safety audit meeting is scheduled for December with COG.
At this meeting, staff will be making recommendations for additional improvements to McKinney Street.
COG will then decide if the recommendations qualify for funding for any improvements.
And I also wanted to mention that this is a section that we have included, Rachel and
myself worked on a plan to include several different projects to the Denton County 2022
bond program that we understand will happen in November.
And so we submitted a list of multiple projects and this was a part of that project as the
city currently does not have funding for improvements on McKinney Street from the loop to the Woodrow-Audra
intersection.
The next question that came up was to address concerns about Malone Street speeding and
bicycle safety between 380 and Scripture.
We had a Friday report item, I'm sure you both read that, on October 29th that talked
about and I know Mayor Pro Tem, you requested that staff evaluate this.
You noted that there had been drivers using the middle turn lane to pass other cars and
people were speeding.
We actually conducted a traffic study from October 18th to October 24th where speeding
was observed with a 9.3% of the drivers going over the posted speed, which is a less than
that 15% threshold.
Staff is currently evaluating different calming measure, traffic calming measures at Malone
and also Cordell and we'll report back in a future Friday report.
We also requested the police department enforce in this area and it's also been added to their
high visibility engagement list.
They have a list that we currently coordinate with them on current areas where there are
visibility, I'm sorry, to raise the visibility of the concerns that are addressed and those
items are speeding, crime, and other traffic related issues.
Did you see the correspondence from Susie Remore about questioning whether the study
was done in the right place, you know, that she didn't, because she lives there, didn't
observe it, being on Malone, did see it, I think on Cordell, did we confirm back to her?
We did receive a correspondence from Ms. Rumer and we're currently evaluating her correspondence.
Chandra, who is also in the room, there he is today, has been working on a response back
to her and working to address her questions and we plan to submit that back to Ms. Rumer
and offer up that conversation with her later this week, but yes, we did receive her correspondence.
Okay.
I think that will be helpful.
And with that, I believe that those are all of the items we currently have.
I know there is one item that was mentioned at the last meeting and I wanted to make sure
we have addressed all of the current items we have, minus one, and that was the questions
about the timing for the 35 and Bonnie Bray projects and we will be bringing that back
to you on the December 15th meeting as we're currently working through some items with
text-out and some internal planning items and so that definitely will be addressed during
that December, I'm hoping it's 15th, that's what's in my head meeting, so look forward
to having that conversation with you at that time.
So, future items then?
Yes, sir.
I'm ready.
So, I don't know if this necessarily calls for a specific report to the Mobility Committee,
but I wanted to address with you something that came up in, I attended the DCTA Board
Members Orientation on Monday, and there was some talk about if Denton is going to keep
its fixed bus routes, which seems likely, but is certainly not a sure thing, that moving
forward it might be wise for there to be greater coordination between DCTA and city capital
projects planning to ensure that things like the curb radius is adequate for buses to make
turns and there was a suggestion that streets that have a lot of bus traffic could be planned
with cutouts for the buses to pull, you know what I'm talking about, like into a separate
drive that's off the street, so that's very nonspecific obviously, but it's just something
I kind of wanted to bring up and put on your radar as future projects are being planned
and designed that I think it would be great to have increased cooperation on those types
of things.
No, I appreciate that.
I will mention that Rachel and myself have reached out to Raymond and Brittany and asked
that if they would like to have a standing meeting that we would have a standing meeting
with them and we've given them access to all of the tools just to share with them all of
the current capital projects that the city has going on.
We're very excited about our new CIP map.
We think that's going to be very helpful.
And they also receive our street construction report to talk specifically about construction.
If there are changes for designs of roadways and those types of things, those are things
that we want to be able to catch with them on the beginning of projects.
And so I think we've mentioned this to you before, but we actually have something called
a racine that we run through when we have a project that is in that initiation phase
and beginning in the design phase, and we've actually added some external stakeholders.
It typically was internal stakeholders, but there are folks such as DCTA, TWU, UNT, TXDOT,
other folks that we want to continue coordinating with and collaborating.
And so we're working through addressing some of those concerns so that they have an opportunity
to have their eyes on some of the designs and some of the areas of which they have concerns.
We also are paying very close attention to those actual routes.
Because there's other things, they're not the only big vehicle that tries to travel
through.
I mean, we have fire trucks, we have solid waste, you know, obviously the trash trucks
are very large, wastewater collections has a number of trucks, also line trucks for DME.
So there's a number of considerations that go into play, but I do appreciate you bringing
that up.
It's just more reason why they need to be a part of the conversation at the very beginning
of the conversation versus at the end when something's going into construction.
Of course, yeah, if we're talking about, you know, cutouts for buses to pull off the street,
that's something that needs to be designed right from the very beginning when there's
right-of-way acquisition happening and all that.
Yeah, so I'm so glad to hear that that seems like that increased coordination is already
in the works.
Yes, ma'am.
Great.
Thank you.
I have just a few questions.
How is the intersection of Parkway and Locust going?
You know, that was signalized in the past.
It was, you know, it wasn't obvious why it was taken out and then it stopped signs, not
stopped signs with little flags.
I mean, is it working or is there something else that needs to happen there?
Any, maybe if you're not ready to address it now, we can pick up next time.
Oh, no, sir.
Sure.
We can bring your report back.
I will tell you, that's the actual project that I'm talking about, that James stayed
here overnight.
They're late Thursday night when I realized and Chandra and I evaluated some of their
most recent crashes and some of the concerns I had in that area.
You know, our building is right there at that corner also and we witness or hear accidents
from time to time.
And so it was definitely something that was high on my radar.
Chandra and I evaluated that and worked with James and Danny to get those additional stop
signs.
And I can tell you from what I can see, and I actually obviously use that every day, multiple
times a day.
So there are multiple staff that we have.
From all indications, the stop signs are working very well and the permanent stop signs have
been installed.
And from all indications, it appears that that is the traffic measure that was needed.
But we'll continue to evaluate if there's additional concerns.
If there are, would flashing stop signs be sort of the next step up?
There's many different options that we can look at.
There are ways to make, you know, I mean, more noticeable, such as a flashing stop sign.
But that's something that we would really rely on our traffic operations team for their
recommendations and we'll work through that with them.
But currently, we are not having as many concerns and we have been working with the police department
and meeting with them monthly when different concerns and questions come up.
And that's one of the intersections of which we did discuss.
Okay, great, apparently you need to have your office move around so that you're, if you're
hearing the crashes, right?
Well, believe it or not, I spend a lot of time following social media and looking at
where accidents are happening.
I pay attention to those.
I do talk to the police department when they do happen almost immediately to ask if it
is an engineering related concern or something where a driver might have been impaired.
And our entire team spends a lot of time driving through the community, especially if we receive
a concern.
We drive it ourselves so that we can understand what that concern is.
Many times we may not be on that roadway and taking our own venture and going on our own
field trip is a very useful tool.
Yeah.
This is an incredibly tiny point, but I noticed that when we're going through the sidewalk
plan that in the visual, there was one of the wayfinding signs pointing to development
services where it no longer is, and I just wondered, did we catch that?
Have those signs been updated?
Some of those pictures that Nathan used were older pictures.
He might not have even been aware of where, he has no idea where the development services
building used to be, but it's definitely something we can check out, so thank you for bringing
it to our attention.
I did not notice that level of detail, so I appreciate it.
That's my job.
Absolutely.
Yeah, just lastly, just because concerns have been expressed to me, would you mind speaking
for a moment about how you're just coping with the difficulty of recruiting engineers?
How are we getting the work done?
Sure.
Our team is obviously very committed to making sure that we are getting our work done.
We have the authority through the city manager's office to look at contract help as needed.
We currently have a consultant on board assisting with our drainage engineer position.
As you may be aware, Chandra has taken a new position and moving to an assistant director
at NTTA.
We currently have a...
Which incidentally I did not get permission for.
Get in line.
I would just tell you that we are very pleased for him and very happy with his new opportunity
that he's taking and I know we've had many conversations, he's very sad about leaving
the city, but it brings me much pride to see someone like him move up in his career to
the next level.
Good luck and congratulations.
I'm very proud of him, but I will tell you that we do have a transportation engineer
still on staff and I will tell you that we're currently evaluating.
David and I have had multiple conversations also with human resources and working through
some different measures, whether it be hiring a contract on staff.
We are having weekly meetings.
I should say I am with HR talking about filling some of these different positions, but there
are things that we have to do sometimes to hire contract labor just for the stopgap.
That's the short answer, right, is the contract labor gets us through till we solve the longer
term.
That's absolutely correct.
And so obviously it's one of my top priorities is to get our team fully staffed.
I will mention Rachel is only down in her division, one individual.
She has a new individual starting on Monday, December 2nd.
Okay.
Trevor has two new individuals that are actually starting Monday.
That'll be the first time the public works inspection division has ever been fully staffed.
And so engineers are a hot commodity.
I will tell you, I have a lot of conversations with others in the community.
My father, my husband, they are all in the business and I will tell you, I have reached
out to many of my resources and they're having the exact same problem the city of Denton
is with hiring engineers.
Down to the point where many people are not even looking at hiring professional engineers.
They're looking at hiring engineers in training, which do not have their professional engineering
license yet.
We'll be working through those next steps to get their professional engineering license.
So it's a good time to be an engineer, but it's also a sad time when we really want to
work on focusing on hiring our individuals.
But it is definitely our intention to make sure that we take all steps necessary to make
sure that we have that contract help as needed.
And we've worked really hard with this new drainage contract and I actually have an individual
on staff that's managing that contract and that process.
And I plan to do the same for the transportation to make sure that we have an individual that
can help.
But there are still some other folks on staff too that are working through transportation.
So I appreciate you bringing it up.
It's definitely top of my priority.
If I told you that it didn't keep me up at night, I'd be lying to you.
But I know that I have the support of the city manager's office to make sure that we
get all the stuff that's necessary.
And our HR department is solid and really helping us through these different steps that
we go through.
So it's just another part of the job.
Okay, kids, if you're thinking about career choices, if you can handle the math, you may
want to look into engineering.
100% agree with that, sir.
I can't talk to enough high schools to explain to children how important it is.
Engineering is a great career.
My own son says, "No, mom, I want to be an architect."
I try to tell him an engineer would be a fantastic career.
But I definitely understand and happy to have those conversations with those young children
to explain to them what a great career it really is.
Okay.
Phil, thank you so much.
I think that's it.
Yes, sir.
Unless we have anything else for concluding items, we usually kind of did that.
So by the way, I'm the son of a high engineer.
I don't know if you ever had that conversation.
I didn't know that.
Yeah.
So we will conclude our meeting at 1110.
Thanks, everyone.