>> Good morning and welcome to this meeting of the mobility committee of the city of Denton.
We have a quorum present, so we'll convene our regular session here at 9 o' 1 a.m.
Let's start with item A, consider approval of the minutes of November 17th.
I'll entertain a motion.
>> I move approval.
>> You have a second?
>> Second.
>> Any discussion?
No?
All in favor say aye.
>> Aye.
Minutes are approved.
Item B, receive a report and hold a discussion regarding the city of Denton transportation/mobility
project status report.
I understand that Mr. Poulster has a family situation, and Becky Devaney will at least
give us the highlights.
>> Yes, sir, I will do the best I can to give you the highlights of the information.
All righty, so let's scroll through and get started.
So the first project is 2181, and that is the roadway that's currently under construction.
It appears that the construction completion date is August of 2022.
I'm going to go to the area where it says see attached, because that's typically their
monthly report.
It appears that all of their current activities are underway with the tentative traffic switching,
weather permitting the night of December 21st into the morning of December 22nd, which will
help prepare them for traffic pattern striping for phase three.
So that will happen, it appears, next week.
And that looks like to be the majority of the update that will, I think, cover, I'm
reading very quickly.
I apologize, I was not prepared to give this presentation.
That appears to be the majority of the information.
The I-35 Mayhill project, it looks like it is currently going through the process of
a right-of-way acquisition.
They appear to have hopes to have the right-of-way acquisition completed in March of 2022 and
have 100% plans ready for June of 2022.
This is the I-35E portion that is from Mayhill North to the Loop 288.
And they're currently working through and addressing comments with Atmos Gas, also working
on some revisions and some agreements with CoServe Gas.
We have an agreement that the city actually sent to the district for review on November
17th.
As you probably are aware, there are multiple water and sewer utilities up and down this
corridor that the city is currently relocating.
That's being managed by our program manager, Kyle Pedigo, in our department.
They're currently working with DME on a number of issues that they're working to resolve
and working through that agreement.
It also appears DASD and Frontier, they're working through some items with.
Looks like the update on Encore is that they are going to be anticipating the submittal
of the estimate for agreement in December, so hopefully that will happen sometime soon.
And then also that agreement with Zio sometime also this month.
Scrolling is a little bit interesting, I'm sorry.
So I-35, 35E, 35W merge, right away acquisition, they're hoping to have complete by the end
of the month.
If you've been up and down this corridor, you'll notice there's been quite a bit of
clearing that has happened through the area.
So this is the portion from where the merge hits all the way to 77 on the north end of
town.
The consultant is currently working on the 95% plan submittal.
They'll follow that up with an aesthetics meeting.
We actually had an aesthetics meeting that was held on November 17th.
That was with the city departments, our department, the parks department.
And we talked about many different aesthetics along this corridor.
I think we've mentioned to you before that there's some opportunities to do some things
similar to what happened in the area of where UNT is at North Texas Boulevard.
So the parks department is really leading that charge with those aesthetic improvements.
And we will be now discussing those on a monthly basis.
And our department is coordinating with Gary Packin on those things.
As far as right away acquisition, it appears there is one parcel that's in negotiation
and 14 that are in possession.
For one of the CSJs, for the other CSJ, it appears there is one in negotiations and 43
in possession.
So now you can see where they think they'll be done by the end of December because they
only have two parcels that it looks like to complete negotiations on.
And let's see what other updates.
The Brazos Valley Electric Department, it appears that they're trying to design to avoid conflict
with any of the 35 project.
And as I mentioned before on the previous, the water wastewater design, we are currently
holding bi-weekly meetings where Kyle Pedogo is leading those, giving an update on the
scope, schedule and budget and real estate acquisition.
And we are currently in the process of acquiring easements and working on designs in those areas.
It appears on the DME transmission section, there is an agreement that is expected to
be completed in May of 2022 and they anticipate to start construction in July of 2022 with
the completion in January of 2023.
As you're probably aware, there's multiple transmission lines in this area that have
to be relocated due to the widening.
And then UNT fiber, it says there's a fiber crossing on I-35 south of Bonnie Bray that's
in review, that they're currently looking to see if there's going to be conflict with
that UNT fiber line.
Next up is the 35 US 380 interim improvements.
The schedule for construction completion is February of 2022.
That's not what it used to say.
It used to say December or January.
Okay, well, we can discuss that with TechStat when we meet with them tomorrow.
I do know that they have removed all the existing pavement.
On November 24th, the ramp for the actual exit was opened.
And that's currently in operation.
They're now working on that new traffic pattern to have the entrance onto Oak.
And so that is my understanding.
I think it was supposed to be functionally done in December and then like finished, finished
in January.
Is that what you're describing kind of functionally done?
Functionally, you can exit off of 35.
That was all put into place and we call it the traffic switch as you can see on the screen.
That happened on November 24th.
As far as the entrance ramp for Oak, that appears what they're finishing up and that
they're hoping to have the entire project completed by February.
I would anticipate, I can't speak on TechStat's behalf, but I would anticipate they would work
to have that entrance ramp open and then of course that would be a type of substantial
completion and we can confirm that date with TechStat and then of course there's aesthetics
and many other things that have to happen after the date.
Well, then there's the additional lane on the access road, right, that on the right
that would feed into 380, isn't that part of the deal?
They are making some improvements in that area, but I don't know the timing of that.
They're also looking at using as much of the existing pavement as they can and just restriping.
We are actually, like I mentioned, meeting with TechStat tomorrow, so I'll see if I can
get a more comprehensive update as the timing of each one of these sections.
A couple of sentences in the Friday report would be great because people are really interested
in having this not unwound.
Sure, no, we've been super excited and as a matter of fact, we were very pleased with
the fact that the traffic switch to have the November 24th completion date happened when
it did because originally it was anticipated to be much later than that, so I know that
they are definitely working on getting that completed as fast as they can, but we'll see
what information we can receive and see what updates we can provide.
Thanks.
All righty, so 35 North.
We don't typically cover a whole lot about this, but the 60 percent plans are currently
under review.
It appears there's three parcels that are still in negotiations, one that's in appraisal,
17 that are currently through the eminent domain process, and 94 that are in possession,
and so that really is from 77 North all the way to the Cook County line.
Can I interject and ask a question?
Sure.
Would you say the 60 percent plan, the 95 percent plan, is that a destination you're
trying to get to 60 percent, or have you completed 60 percent, or what does that mean when you
say a 60 percent plan?
Sure, so typically in any engineering design contract, it's very standard to have 30, 60,
and 90 percent review.
There are some contracts that are set up with 45 percent and 90, or 90, 95 percent.
What you're doing is you're working yourself through a phase of a project, so 30 percent
is typically pretty schematic.
You're understanding where you're going, you're understanding what easements might be required,
what properties might be impacted, and neither what utilities or roadway infrastructure,
drainage, et cetera, need to be constructed.
By the time you get to 60 percent, you have a pretty good design that's something that
somebody can review, make comment to.
It'll have what we call profiles, so a plan view is looking down at the actual plan and
showing, okay, this line's going from here to here.
A profile is taking that and actually putting it just like it sounds like on a profile.
So that's typically what you see at 60 percent.
And then you'll receive comments.
And then 90 to 95 percent is typically, hey, these are pretty good.
There's probably not a whole lot that needs to be changed.
That's typically the timeframe of which the specifications are also prepared where they
talk specifically about the materials and equipment that it's going to take, the methodology
behind the construction.
And so those are just traditional phases that any type of project goes through.
They're pretty standard language for construction practice.
And so that's, you know, at 60 percent, they consider that it, from TechStop perspective,
plans adequate, which means the plans are in enough form and shape.
They're confident of where they're going.
They can now be used for others to look at how that's going to impact their infrastructure.
And that's when we start seeing some of these other companies like AT&T and all of those
people, they usually tend to come in on the 60 percent or are they way down there on the
30 percent?
So they're made aware when the project is kicked off and they have utility coordination
meetings with TechStop.
Typically individuals wait for 60 percent plans adequate to have those in their hand
because that's a pretty defiant message saying this is exactly where we're going to go, where
we're going to be located.
And then when they get to 90 percent, obviously, that's just more well-defined.
But it's pretty typical in standard practice to wait until you receive 60 percent plans
adequate to start your design to see your impacts.
There are some schools of thought that actually say that once right-of-way is acquired and
the TechStop knows where the future right-of-way line is going to be, that you're comfortable
enough at that point to see what your impact is to your utility and you could start beginning
to do preliminary work.
In many of these cases, it's hard to see the big picture, but TechStop has multiple utilities
that are impacted that run all up and down their corridors.
And so there's a process for that.
So 60 percent is just saying, you know, this is very, very close and, you know, enough
information that we can actually walk through the process.
So.
Oh, and your mic's not on.
Yes, I'm sorry.
It's on, but it's over there.
So I need to be reminded to put it in front of me.
Thank you.
No problem.
Okay.
Thank you so much.
I'm just, you know, educational purposes for me.
Sure.
You know, the plan is where we're, where we are and we're working towards something.
So I appreciate that.
Thank you.
That's no problem at all.
I'm happy to share that.
Okay, so that's the portion up to Cook County.
Let's go to the next project.
So the 35W Main Lanes project, it appears that they're hoping to be environmentally
cleared by April of 2022.
They do have HNTB as the firm that is working on this design, and I don't see a whole lot
of other updates.
So it looks like that one's rocking along.
On the 35W Frontage Road project, it appears that they're looking to have this right-of-way
acquisition complete March 2023.
It also appears that this is also being constructed, or I'm sorry, designed by HNTB.
It says HNTB are currently going to meet to finalize the fee, so because HNTB was selected
to design this, it looks like they're working on negotiations with their proposal.
U.S. 383-77.
Looks like that they're anticipating construction to be complete in 2023.
And so that's something that's currently already underway, and this is the sidewalk and also
turn lane project.
It says to go see the attached TechStop project update.
So it appears that they're currently removing driveways and paving up to the Elm Fork Bridge.
They're removing the concrete paving between the Elm Fork Bridge and the Lake Louisville
Bridge relief number one and two, and working to form sidewalk from Lakeview Road all the
way to Elm Fork.
They also appear that they place traffic control plan signs, narrowing lanes.
As you're aware, we passed the ordinance to have this in the 50 mile per hour to let the
traveling public know that all happened on November 10th to lower the speed limit in
this area and that traffic has been shifted to the north for the entire length.
And they don't anticipate traffic pattern changes until the contractor moves into phase
two.
This is very similar to that project.
This is also 380 East.
So this is they anticipate the construction to be complete for co-serve.
It appears that they're remaining on the top poles, and they hope to have those cleared
by the end of the month, and it looks like they're working with a few other entities.
This is farther east of town, so this doesn't truly impact the city from a perspective of
utilities.
It looks like they had a pre-construction meeting held in November, so that looks like
that project is moving along.
Question about the 380, I know that there were improvements that needed to be made to
the bridge in order to support the weight of the center barrier.
Do you know where they're at on that aspect of the project?
It says that phase one eastbound construction, drainage, driveways, and turn lanes are planned
for next month, including forming bridge vents on the Elm Fort Bridge and Lake Louisville
Bridge Relief 1.
It appears that that's something that's going to be happening in the next month, and that's
their plan for the next month.
So in Mr. Polster's report in January, I would anticipate that to be the current activity
section.
So that would be my hopes is that it's within the next month.
Okay.
All right.
Thank you.
No problem.
No, you're fine.
And I also am doing the best I can to provide you the information.
He is the knowledgeable subject matter expert.
You're doing great.
Thank you.
On the US 380 feasibility study, I think all of you are aware there were public hearings
held I believe it was two weeks ago.
And we had one in Prosper and then also one here at the Civic Center on the feasibility
study.
As you can see, this is the overall feasibility study area, 380 from the Denton County line
all the way to where it hits Loop 288 and then Loop 288 around the 35.
Oh, I didn't have to guess it's right in front of me.
The public meetings were held on the 30th and then December 2nd.
The information is on Keep It Moving Dallas and they're holding a virtual meeting basically
where you can present and provide comments if you go to that website until January 19th
of 2022.
So that'll give an opportunity for folks who weren't able to attend the meeting in person
to actually go on, review the material and then give comments.
After those public meetings are completed, they'll work on a summary report and then
make recommendations as to how they're going to move forward.
Loop 288 West, it looks like because the yellow highlighted the estimated construction cost,
there were some changes with the funding.
It appears the let date is September of 2026.
Mr. Polster's telling me that there are 33 parcels to acquire and all parcels are in
appraisal.
We did have an internal kickoff meeting with Chank Patel and Yerby, ITS, and TaxDOT on
November 10th.
They began survey efforts this month and geotech efforts will begin in January.
The 60% plans adequate are expected in March of 2023.
The SU team has began its efforts and they're completing the records request.
They are going to be serving approximately 10,000 linear feet of lines designated.
So SU stands for Subsurface Utility Exploration.
I'm not sure if you knew that or not, so I wanted to make sure I was explaining that.
Shawn just tells us to look at the glossary in the back.
Okay, good, fantastic.
So on FM 1515, it appears that that project is moving along.
They're working on the environmental clearance.
So they're going through this re-approval process and they've made some modifications
to the design, which means they have to go back through a schematic re-approval which
happened on October 30th and now they're working through that environmental re-approval.
Once that's completed, then they can work through their right away acquisition and then
obviously getting to their plan phases.
It just said they're continuing efforts towards completion and submittal of the required environmental
documentation and re-evaluation.
They submitted those in November of 2021 to include the Archaeological Background Study
Memo, the Historic PCR Memo, the Air Quality Tech Memo, Traffic Noise Tech Memo, and Community
Impacts Memo, and it mentions that all other technical reports are in process.
So this project's in a little bit different phase than all the other ones that we've kind
of talked about.
It's actually going through the environmental clearance process right now.
FM 1173, Denton County issued an RFQ for plans, specs, and environmentals for the phase efforts
and those responses are due December 16th.
So tomorrow they should have their proposals back from engineering firms who are interested
in working on this project for the county.
So next month I would anticipate that they have reviewed those different qualification
documents that have been submitted and be looking at selecting a firm to move forward
with on that design.
Elman Locust, Techscot is currently investigating the existing pavement structure.
They're looking at the cores and making visual inspections.
They have found that there is no concrete underneath the pavement and they're working
to quantify the need for the full depth.
They're currently coordinating with us.
They're hoping to have some information back to us by the end of the year.
If not, it'll be early 2022 so that they can give us an estimation of what their replacement
measures are going to be on that roadway.
Just to give you a little bit of background, that is an ongoing conversation on phase one.
They had to do some research to actually look at what the pavement structure was and what
improvement measures that they will need to make in order to have that roadway reconstructed
and so that's been something we've been talking with them monthly and staying on top of, as
we're very much interested in, in when the timing they can come in to make the replacements
and the much needed improvements in this area prior to, you know, once the PEC4 project
is completed and really wanting to make sure that they make all of those rehabilitation
updates and then as you're aware, the city will be looking at taking over those sections
of the roadway but we want to ensure that it's been brought up to a standard that is
acceptable to the city before we look at taking over those sections.
And currently that conversation is only for phase one which is really all south of the
courthouse.
And I think I made it through so hopefully I answered all the questions that I can.
Could you read the glossary to us?
I'm sorry?
Could you read the glossary to us?
The glossary?
I already closed the presentation.
I will definitely look to get a more detailed update on the 380 interim improvements with
that traffic switch when we speak with TxDOT tomorrow and we'll work to have something
in the Friday report for you.
Yeah, I mean just a couple sentences so we can share with the public.
That's great.
Thank you.
Any other questions?
Okay.
Thank you.
Appreciate you.
You made it.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay.
Yes.
All right.
So that'll close out item B. We'll do item C now.
Receive a report and hold the discussion regarding updates from DCTA.
Morning, Ray.
Good morning.
I'd like to brief the committee on the results of our DCTA board meeting in December.
It's a very significant time in our transition as an agency from predominantly fixed route
and rail to a multimodal mobility solutions provider with GoZone and fixed route and as
you know, we've been deliberating over several months of data and I'm here to...
Thank you very much.
Oh, here.
I'll let you...
Better?
Okay.
Thank you so much.
So I'm here to present the results of our December board meeting.
Let's start with what the board actually approved.
So we, after several months of looking at the data, we went through a lot of detail analysis,
let's say we, it was a collective of DCTA staff, Accenture, who has a consultancy that
also looks...
Has a practice that is focused on transportation, specifically fixed route, on demand mobility
services, as well as the head of global operations for Via that was also involved.
Their entire team was involved in looking at routes and providing information back to
the board and to the consultants and ourselves as to where they thought fixed route and on
demand could be complimentary.
The results were that the board approved a cancellation route one.
I'll get into the details of how and why some of those decisions were made.
They also agreed to discontinue routes 21 and 22 in Louisville on December 24th, modified
the Denton Connect routes two, three, four.
We were saying five is a new route, but it's basically splitting route four, which was
very lengthy and it caused some operational challenges.
So we really took four and instead of saying four A and four B, just made it a little bit
more simple to call it a new route five and then retention of six and seven.
All routes have modifications to them designed to improve efficiency and effectiveness.
So when we talk about fixed route ridership, the two major pillars of a good healthy route
is that it has frequency and it's on time.
So the longer the route, the tendency from a ridership perspective is toward the ends
of the routes that tend to be less productive, but it's also very challenging based on the
length of route, especially if you get behind schedule to get the vehicles back on schedule
because of the distance that they're traveling.
So we needed to look at that.
We also wanted to look at the day, the average weekly day and determine how productive the
ridership actually was by hour of day because that also provides a different lens to look
at the productivity of the service.
So what has been presented in the past is one kind of golden rule.
You want to carry 10 passengers per hour.
If you look at it in the aggregation of all hours served, their unproductive hours therefore
drags the entire average daily ridership down.
We wanted to split that apart and analyze it a little bit more and see if it revealed
important information and it did.
And that's what we're here to present and what was presented to the board of directors.
So just to ground the conversation, it's good to look at multiple years, the perspective
on ridership.
The good news here is that when you look at fixed route plus what the directive of the
board was to implement GoZone, when you stack those on top of each other, we're actually
reaching ridership levels on those specific routes that exceeded pre-pandemic numbers,
which is exciting.
If I stood up and applauded, like you've grown ridership.
That's been the elusive thing to grow total ridership.
That's core to our mission, right, is more people.
People just kind of like, I think become exhausted and didn't even view that as a possibility,
you know.
So.
Yes.
Thank you.
That was actually highlighted by the VIA team is that they have not seen any of their services
across the country actually reach pre-pandemic levels.
So there's something very interesting about what we're doing that's different.
A lot of transit agencies are deploying GoZone and similar mobility services, but they're
doing it as a pick and replace as opposed to an overlay.
As opposed to a portfolio approach, you know, as we discussed.
And so conventionally it makes sense why have two different services competing in the same
area.
VIA actually argued that in a lot of ways it'll be complementary.
Folks will choose, as I believe you've said before, depending on the actual trip that
they need to take, they may choose a different modality or they may actually use a combination
thereof.
So I'm kind of doing a preemptive comment here, which you're going to see later.
But if you look at the just the stack diagram here with green being the Connect ridership
at this time and the GoZone ridership, when you stack them on top of each other, the 2019
which is in blue, you can see for the month of October, at least for the month of October,
you'd actually accomplish what we'd all hoped for, which was increased ridership.
GoZone ridership continues to grow, which is fascinating and fantastic, both that we're
getting the efficacy out of the system.
We are still working with the contractor and that the efficiency, so we want both effectiveness
and efficiency out of all of your different services.
The effectiveness has been tremendous, the efficiency is still a challenge and the efficiency
basically boils down to how many people are we carrying on a vehicle, no different than
how many people, 10 passengers per hour, it's the same type of equivalency for GoZone.
Part of that is…
Pardon me, Ray, do you think that the curve is flattening now and you're kind of finding
what the eventual size will be, it looks like maybe you're zeroing in on…
Well, I think it's hard to say given several factors, one is it's only been out there
for a couple of months.
Usually October is our highest ridership time because of all the school activity.
The expectation is that we'll see a significant drop off both in GoZone and connect ridership
as we always do after entering into the holiday breaks and then you'll see it naturally
go up.
Some of this has to do with that effectiveness versus efficiency.
You can only be so efficient depending on the number of trips and how well we're able
to aggregate the trips and I'll kind of talk about, do a little bit more of a deep
dive on why we're not seeing the efficiency yet and some of the things that we're going
to try to do moving into the remainder of this year.
When you stack them up against, again, if you just looked at GoZone ridership and you
weren't connecting the two, you could see how big of a difference just picking it up
and replacing it with something different.
I don't think we'd be achieving the ridership levels.
What the trend suggests is that there are people that are selecting fixed route because
fixed route is the preferred mode for many of the trips.
There's roughly 19,000 trips that are happening across the connect service that if you eliminated
that, imagine you'd have 19,000 more trips that would likely need to be picked up by
GoZone.
So part of the concern and why we went through this analysis is to make sure that we weren't
going to negatively affect GoZone and that was part of the board's reasoning for looking
at this over several months because if we didn't feel like the ridership was moving
over then why was that and what happens if we eliminate the service?
People still need rides.
So if you can imagine with this level of efficiency or the number of trips you're seeing, again,
it's just a few weeks of data.
I don't think we can really call that a trend but if we're reaching capacity, there's some
ways of looking at that capacity.
One is the contract calls for about a 15-minute wait time as a maximum.
So that's generally what we're trying to accomplish is you wait no more than 15 minutes.
We're actually seeing more of a closer to 18, 19, in some cases 20 minutes or more depending
on the time of day wait which means that the availability of the service isn't necessarily
there because we're stretching it, we're moving it, we're moving a lot of people.
And so why is that and as we kind of start looking at the data, this is an interesting
map.
I don't know that we've presented this before to the board or this committee.
We certainly have shown the heat map of all the trips which are represented by the orange
and red dots.
Those are origins where we pick people up.
But then we've overlaid both the University Service and the Denton Connect Service so that
we have a better perspective of what coverage you actually have with the entire network.
So a lot of folks are under the impression that the university shuttles are only for
university students but that's not correct.
It's actually open to the general public as well.
So we wanted to make sure that we were visually looking at the entire network and where transfers
can happen as we start thinking about a multimodal system and the concept of hubs, which I'll
get into a little bit more, but basically that is a point on the fixed route network
where we can transfer somebody from GoZone, a shorter trip, onto the fixed route network,
traverse a longer area and use pricing to address certain things to make the entire
network efficient.
But you can see in the dark blue, those are the university routes, they're heavily
concentrated in the same areas where you see a lot of the trips with GoZone happening.
But it does a good job that both the fixed route I think and the GoZone of covering that
southern sector of Denton County and then that far right side is where it comes close
to Unicorn Lake area and the very far kind of gray areas where you have Med Park, the
train station and the like.
You know, I think I see the growth potential, I mean it appears to me that part of what
you've accomplished is filling in the map, you know, where it just really isn't public
transit.
I mean there's, you know, like message one is obviously the concentration in the southwest,
but you know, all the light orange is, you know, those are trips that couldn't have happened
before and I think the growth potential is filling in the white.
Now imagine if, you know, it was like an electric fleet or a non-polluting fleet or something
like what a great accomplishment to replace all those trips with, you know, with a different
form of transportation.
Agreed.
And this is the existing map.
So one of the things, as I mentioned, we wanted to look at through the data is are there times
a day and the length of the trips.
As you can see Route 3, which is pretty much in the center of, it runs east and west, but
this far right side, you don't see a lot of trips happening in that area, but the same
vehicle has to travel out there and so you see demand kind of drop off in that area.
Those are areas on each one of these routes that we want to look at because we have workforce
issues like the rest of the country does.
If you don't have enough operators, you're traveling long distances, our on-time performance
has been poor, so we wanted to figure out, well, with the existing workforce, how do
we make the system more efficient and then how do we leverage GoZone to actually transfer
people on the fixed route and use it as valuable infrastructure.
So that's the theme that we're going to walk through here and kind of dissect a little
bit.
So here's the interesting thing, that when you look at GoZone and you can literally overlay
and we will here in a minute show you the same curve on fixed route, it is something
that is unique, our belief is due to COVID.
Over the last two years ridership trends have changed nationally, VIA and Accenture have
validated this as well, that normal travel patterns in transit you would see two peaks,
one in the AM and one in the PM.
The majority of those are efficient to aggregate and to move because people are usually taking
trips to go to the work and at the end of the day they're coming back from work.
So you would see a peak in the morning and a peak in the afternoon, where we've actually
seen the majority of the peak is in midday and this is consistent with traffic patterns
as well, there's a lot more traffic in the middle of the day than you have in the early
evenings and in the morning time.
It also impacts what VIA originally proposed to DCTA as far as normal ridership, if normal
ridership happens the way the expectation was, we'd see growth in ridership.
The expectation is you'd see it in the morning, you'd see it in the evening, you could aggregate
people on these trips, be very efficient.
What we're actually seeing is a disaggregation of ridership, but a concentration in the middle
of the day and those trips are going everywhere, they're going to doctors, they're going to
retail, they're going to lunch, and they're not normal business trips.
So it's less efficient, if that makes sense, for them and that's one of the findings that
is coming back.
We, again, just have a couple of months of data.
But the problem is, is when you start looking at fixed route, fixed route has the same curve.
And so those 19,000 trips that are happening on fixed route, you can imagine that gold
bar in the center is where all those trips are happening.
We're concerned that it's going to overwhelm the system, if that makes sense.
But you can see some natural growth in AM/PM peak and evening, which is very, very healthy.
Something that we wouldn't expect necessarily on fixed route, because it provides a lot
more flexibility.
So let's start getting into some of the detail and why we made the decisions or recommendations
that we did and then ultimately why the board approved the proposal.
So looking at three major categories, AM peak from 5 a.m. to roughly 10, from 10 a.m. to
4, and from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m., and then late evenings, those are the categories that we
looked at.
And then we looked at ridership by hour in those groupings.
You can see that during the midday that Denton Connect Route 1, we were seeing a trend, and
this has been the case for a significant period of time.
It's just not efficient or effective, and we felt like there were better ways to serve
this route.
And so we looked at it both in aggregate, in these buckets, we also looked at it at
time slices.
Again, you can see noon, 1 p.m., 2 p.m. were the highest, but you can see a drop off on
that ridership from September to October.
Looking at routes 2, similar curves, but also once we looked at this, we said, okay, is
there a better way to structure the route so that we can make it more efficient, more
on time, better frequency, so that we can actually get ridership up?
So it's a nested problem.
It's not just how many people we're carrying during the hours we were serving, but if your
on-time performance is below 80%, I don't know a lot of people that are going to be
interested in waiting on a bus that they're not sure when it's going to show up.
And so that's naturally one of the major parameters of looking at service, and so this is a portion
of it, also looking at the time of day was important.
Excuse me.
I just want to first make a comment, then ask a question.
You'll notice I haven't been asking you to be recognized or whatever.
We're only three people, you know, plus staff, but I'm perfectly okay with that kind of fire
at will, just conversation, because it's hard on my peripheral vision to watch both of you.
So I don't mean to be dominating, I'm just having questions I assume you can ask when
you wish.
When you use terms "effective" and "efficient," what are you mostly thinking?
Is "efficient" just like number of people on the bus, basically?
Or do you think it's not efficient, just running into buses?
Typically, efficiency has to do with cost per hour, passengers per hour.
Effectiveness is, are we seeing growth?
Are we meeting the needs of the public?
Is it being accessed where it needs to be accessed?
A less effective route would be one that is, where there's generally not ridership growing
over a long period of time.
Is it efficient?
Is it staying on time?
Is it staying, is it on time?
Is it -- So when you're saying it's not being effective
or not being efficient, it's like some combination of not enough riders per trip and not making
it on time?
Correct.
Okay.
And we're applying resources, and every transit agency has standards, performance standards.
Typically, transit properties will look at the underperforming routes, the least effective
and efficient, the lower 10%, if you will, and you try to make modifications to that
service so that you can either improve it or you eliminate it, and that's pretty much
most corporations look at it the same way as how do we stay effective and efficient?
You're always looking at that lower, least performing productivity in your organization,
and that's the same thing as we look at routes and try to make sure that they're both effective
and efficient.
Okay.
I'm taking off track, it helps me follow up.
Okay.
So you'll see a general trend in these, but as you'll see where they become more productive,
more effective, this is an example, is we're carrying on routes three in the a.m. and midday,
we're meeting that 10 passenger per hour goal, the peak, and of course, evening, slides
off significantly, so for the hours in the late evening after 7 p.m., we have service
out there, we're not carrying very many people.
Now there's an argument, going back to the effectiveness perspective, if you go to downtown
anywhere U.S.A. that has a significant transit system, they'll continue to run service in
the late hours because you might have one or two people that need to have access to
transit and it's important for that city, for those municipalities, to have that service
out there, and so that's where it's effective but it's not efficient.
The efficiency would be it's cost-effective, you're carrying a number of people that you
need to carry, but that's not always the answer that a city's looking for, and that gets back
to livability and do you look at transit as a utility, do you look at how do you want
to shape the services that you afford your citizens, and I think it's true of a lot
of utilities and infrastructure that cities have to put in place is if you have people
in rural areas, it may not be as efficient but it certainly is effective because they
need those utilities to live where they live, right, and so in many ways we have to look
at it the same way, but because we have scarce resources, we have to make some decisions
and that was part of the challenge we had, which is, hey, let's pick and replace one
mode for the other and we only have so many dollars to spend, so how do we create a network
that we can create a base of effectiveness and efficiency and then grow it, if it makes
sense, in the right way, whether that be with on-demand or fixed route in the future, okay,
so you'll see with DC3.
I'm here to ask a question at this point.
How long is the, how long does it take to make that decision, I mean, what length of
time are you looking at to make the decision about the effectiveness and the efficiency?
So the board approved the budget to carry this service through the end of September,
which will be our fiscal year.
We'll start seeing in a handful of months once we deploy the new service and there's
a chart I'll share with you later, a timeline, but we're going to need a couple of months
to make these changes, so the proposal is to get all these changes, the board approved
it in December.
If you can imagine, some of these routes are going to need new bus stop signs, they're
going to change where they actually were, so we have to move signs, there's some infrastructure
changes we need to make, there's some public information and communication that we need
to do, so we're looking to make those changes in March and then from March through probably
July and August we'll continue to assess that data as we come up to the September timeframe
we'll make recommendations to either continue to tweak it.
Between June and September, actually starting now through June, we're going to continue
to work with VIA and Accenture on a comprehensive service assessment, and I'm kind of taken
away from some of the slides so if you'll entertain me I'll walk us through what that
timeline looks like, but we have a plan for that.
DC4, all these trends look very similar as you can see, midday was definitely a significant
number of riders, this was one that was extraordinarily long, I'll show that to you in a little bit
more fidelity in what we're doing with 4 and 5, we don't have a slide for 5 because it
doesn't currently exist, Denton Connect 6 has strong ridership a.m. and day peak during
the p.m. peak, evening significantly drops off so we have service out there, so you can
kind of see the trend where we're talking about what do we do in the morning, what do
we do in the late evening, do we shrink the number of hours because that will save cost
and then do we reshape the routes, and so this is the analysis.
I think the entire board was in agreement that Route 7 is a very strong performer, there
was no question about Route 7 and its performance, however we did feel that there was some inefficiency
on some of the legs at the end or the ends of this that needed to be modified and we
provided that information to the board.
So you can see from roughly 7 a.m. to about 6 p.m. is the majority of currently what we're
seeing during, we'll call it the COVID era, it's starting to turn into multiple years,
we're seeing a very balanced consistent level of ridership in and around the a.m. to probably
6 p.m. time frame on those shoulders we really drop off on effectiveness, but this is where
GoZone becomes very effective and can take over that inefficiency.
So let's talk about what the service looked like and what the board approved, so in gray
was the original service, the map in blue is what the new proposed service looks like,
you can see there's significant portions that are in gray that were kind of on the outer
edges that we feel between the service, the UNT service shuttles, the new connect route
service, there's a right literally in the center you see almost like a little checkerboard,
that's the DDTC where you have all the majority of the routes connecting in and we pulled
route 7 on the west off of University Inn because that portion under the bridge west
of 35 was taking some considerable time.
We also, I'll get into some of the details, but what you see in blue you can kind of see
it's more concentrated, it's closer to the city center, and the intent is that you would
use GoZone to connect to that service and we'll talk a little bit more about that and
how that's going to work.
Here's what the new service would look like with the university and the proposed new service
plan.
This is the proposed schedule and this is a bit of an eye chart, it's in your packet,
happy to answer any questions, but generally what we did with all routes was we started
them a little later in the morning, again the majority of the ridership is in the midday,
not in the morning.
If we get back to a point that we understand the new normal, people start returning to
city centers for business trips, we'll take that in consideration, we'll modify the service
as required, but generally route 1 is discontinued, routes 2, 3, 4, the new 5 will start around
8, 8.30 depending on the route and what we've seen as far as ridership specifically on each
route and routes 21, routes 22 were discontinued.
So that was route 1, again if you remember the mix UNT and connect service, we feel that
a lot of that area can be served more effectively with GoZone, you also have some UNT connect
shuttles that do a nice job of connecting into Unicorn Lake and we just feel like that's
a better resource plan.
Didn't connect 2 was significantly modified, we're going down different streets, the part
in gray that's being discontinued, we looked at Med Park and recognized that you have the
Colorado Express, you have certainly the A train that goes through that area, we felt
it was fairly redundant to take that little leg down south and felt like hitting the target
in a lot of the retail was more important so that people had access from the city to
that shopping district, again we were trying to ensure that the routes were, if we could
the goal was to make it less than 30 minutes in frequency, this one was around 40, 42 minutes
and getting all the way down there to Med Park was going to make it close to an hour
and hour frequency just doesn't work real well so we wanted to shorten that up.
Route 3, that outer leg was, if you go back to that heat map, not a lot of trips out there,
again we were trying to create accessibility to needed services, we feel GoZone does a
great job of that, this vertical rectangle on the far right side of the new proposed
route is where City Hall and all those municipal services are now located, we feel like we
have much better access there in this route, I know there was some challenges around Ryan
High School, the beauty of GoZone is you can carry folks from the age of 13 and up, I think
getting in and around the high school without a big bus is smarter, it's a lot more safe,
we're going to have to look at travel patterns there along Mayhill Road and just ensure from
a pedestrian perspective and the vehicles, again it's a mini van so we should have much
better mobility, maneuverability with a smaller vehicle so I think this will be a safe way
to make the turns and provide accessibility into all those very much needed city services.
I just wanted to interject, I know that Council Member Beck and I were both kind of had some
feelings about Ashley Oaks no longer having a stop but there is a very, very nice and
extremely wide new path that leads from Ashley Oaks to Mayhill so there are still opportunities
for folks there to connect to fixed route service and GoZone service of course.
And as a standard planning process, when you plan routes you expect people, you prefer
not to, but the concept is that people probably should make an efficient transit system walk
as much as a quarter of a mile to stop, that can be a long way to go when it's cold, when
it's hot, when it's raining, which we have all the time around here unfortunately, sometimes
at the same time, but again it's easy to fall into when you're planning routes to think
about accessibility just from the route itself because that's conventionally, or historically
that's what transit had available to it, but now we have GoZone so if there are shorter
trips now kind of get into where we think the sweet spot is for GoZone, but the concept
is instead of walking, pick up GoZone, take it to a fixed route, get on the fixed route,
use pricing strategy to incentivize people to do that, and it creates a much better mixed
use mobility solution.
It's a transfer.
A transfer.
And if you go to thriving cities around the country, they do that every day.
Any more questions about this route?
Explain to me again, I missed some stuff here, on that route that is where the little red
dot is up at the top.
And then it goes up over there on North Roodale, and then we go left, and then we go over there
to the little red dot that's up there at the top.
I can't really see it very well.
What is that again?
Tell me about that point.
So there's a lot of density there.
The issue for transit is to ensure you're not making unprotected left turns across heavily
used corridors.
It's quite unsafe to do that.
And so we do, we have to go through some machinations to figure out how to get in and around and
try to make as many right turns as possible.
If you make too many, you wind up right where you started from, right?
So we didn't want, where that dot is, is there's a lot of folks that live on that particular
road.
And when we sat down and were discussing, well, why don't we make it more efficient
and not pick that up, we would have required a lot of people to walk almost daily.
And so we didn't want to miss that neighborhood.
It's an important neighborhood to serve.
I wish I had our planner here, because I don't have every road relegated to memory, but I
do know that there's a lot of density in that area, apartment complexes that are important
to serve.
It just looked a little tight in there, so I just wanted a little explanation.
Everything else seemed so broad, but in there it looked fairly tight and just wanted to
I definitely felt like it would be more efficient, even visually more appealing to not have it
there.
But from a practical operating perspective, we felt serving people specifically on that
road was more efficient than having everybody walking through the neighborhoods to get to
a heavily traveled road, and we certainly don't want to be stopping on 288.
It's not safe to do so.
You can wind up with a lot of rear ends there, so we need a place for people to actually
board the vehicles.
288 is not preferred.
Now when we do more joint planning and we talk about how to make this more pedestrian
friendly, transit friendly, we start talking about curb cuts and pull outs for vehicles
as part of the planning strategy for roads, road expansions, so that you can actually
safely pull over turnouts, if you will, for pedestrians to load, that we can start getting
out of these, well, we've got to find a safe place to stop.
University is a perfect example where the thoroughfare is efficient because it's a
higher speed.
You can move a lot more people through it, but it's not very safe to be stopping on
university with a bunch of bus stops because then you're clogging up traffic, and it's
not pedestrian friendly.
It's also not operator friendly.
But if you create some pull outs, if you will, where the bus can exit out of that and stop
and make a good collection point, if you have a handful of those throughout the city, it
makes it a lot more effective.
But we're having to plan around what the city infrastructure currently is.
Okay.
Thank you.
I'm making a mental note to ask about this when we review the mobility plan.
How closely are the, you know, is it knitted with DCTA's plans?
It's something that I don't think we've ever discussed.
It's something that we need to think about in urban planning if you're looking to create
a -- so as we get into the conversations about hubs, hubs tend to be in areas where you have
large concentrations, aggregations of people.
You start planning those hubs in a natural way so that people are safe.
There's sidewalks, there's benches, you make it a comfortable place for people to actually
use transit and can actually increase economic development around some of those areas.
You look at Austin and other places that did a great job of urban planning and design in
neighborhoods and they've done a really good job of that.
And even as we are having at this point of this conversation, I'm thinking about one
particular place that's a bit frustrating to me because I live close to the University
Drive is now I'm recognizing that that stop that's right there on Bell and University
Drive is so close to the corner of Bell and University Drive so if I get stuck behind
the connect, which I have been before, I'm really close to Bell and so even just the
idea of pushing them further up into the middle of the -- you know, in the middle of the -- between
the blocks is even something to consider.
>> And imagine what that does as far as we try to keep our accidents down to a minimal
number getting rear-ended on higher corridors when you're trying to stop can be a challenge.
People getting stuck behind a transit vehicle and trying to merge over to the left when
cars are traveling at a higher speed, it's just we're all trying to traverse the same
infrastructure so coordinated planning can certainly help in the future as we continue
to shape the city.
>> So speaking of Route 4, you can see Route 4 was very lengthy, took well over an hour.
The blue and the gray were all part of Route 4.
So it starts on the far west side under 35, traverses University and comes all the way
across to the east side down Loop 288, Loop 288 you just don't stop so that north southern
portion on Loop 288 was literally not picking anybody up so they're ineffective, inefficient
miles and hours of service and then we would get all the way down to the unicorn lake and
the shopping mall area, heavy traffic, so you can imagine you get behind schedule and
you're pretty much toast for the rest of the peak period until you can recover if at all.
So that was naturally something we want to look at.
You'll see the new Route 4 is very a higher frequency along the retail with the concept
that there would be a hub on each end of this thing where you could feed people in from
the neighborhoods on Route 4 and make it a lot more efficient and then that little dot
that you're talking about I think is a stop that you're referring to Ms. Byrd.
And so what we decided to do is rethink this whole southern leg of the route and that's
where Route 5 comes in.
So Route 4 and Route 5 connect right there around Bell, so that's a natural transfer
location, and then Route 5 picks up generally neighborhoods that were being served but in
a different way, so we're picking up more folks staying off of 288 coming down Nottingham
and then connecting into the DTC where you have rail and all the majority of the other
routes so if they want to stay on fixed route they can transfer, if they need to go somewhere
that's not on the fixed route they transfer to Gozone, so much more efficient.
For the people who would travel the whole length of the old 4 where they had to deal
with a long ride and a slow ride, what's the difference now in travel time as they
do two routes and make a transfer, they must have some wait time they have to add in?
Where did my schedule go?
So Route 4 was 56 minutes down to 40, so that's a significant improvement, and again let's
not forget that it's not just fixed route, they can get to Bell and transfer to Gozone.
Maybe that's really the right answer.
So the really exciting part is coming about how people will have through the app options
for them too.
I just didn't want to get through this because I think this is very important for your communities
for your stakeholder members to understand what happened to their routes and why.
So I wanted to just hover over these just a minute so that everybody was comfortable
with the changes that have been made.
Route 6 does a great job generally connecting Discovery Park, the university, it's been
doing phenomenally well, it's probably the fastest growing ridership route.
It was getting into these neighborhoods in the gray route that one is a safety concern,
one is it slows us down because we're in neighborhoods zigzagging through them.
It's not a far walk to get to the mainline fixed route and we just felt like it was much
more efficient to streamline that and get the wait times down.
And then route 7, much more streamlined, it connects with Razor Ranch at the top and continues
to run along Hickory and into the DDTC, but also makes it more efficient.
So this is where we're heading.
We're thinking about the fixed route design in two phases.
This is the initial phase, as you know, we were based on the city council, Denton City
Council's direction, your resolution.
You had some major initiatives that you wanted to address and your representative, Alison
McGuire, did an exceptional job of making sure that the voices were heard and we took
that into planning considerations.
So we fundamentally feel like we've checked the majority of the boxes.
The boxes you said you wanted checked is retain fixed route, you weren't against modifying
the routes, but obviously we needed to rethink it and reshape it based on GoZone.
You wanted to retain employment of bus operators.
We felt the best way to do that was to start with the workforce that we have and shape
the services to the best of our ability around doing what is most important from a transit
perspective is to make the routes consistent so that people can rely on them and make as
many frequency changes as we could with the workforce that we had and then grow it based
on the data that we continue to see coming at us or reshape it and it's not necessarily
growth in some cases, we might snip a little piece here and add another piece there.
So that's the initial redesign based on the few months of data that we have.
We're going to continue to work with VN Accenture on a comprehensive service analysis.
Now that we have these two modes and we continue to gather data over the next several months,
we're going to enter a really interesting period.
School's going to be out for several weeks, we're going to see a little blip, we'll see
a major one in the summer.
So we want to take those into consideration and say, okay, how do the networks actually
complement each other?
One of the things that DCTA has historically done is we've taken a lot of service off the
streets during the summer because school is out and so the natural thought is we'll eliminate
the service because it's not efficient or effective.
But there's some concerns about doing that because you also have these dips in employment
and trying to get operators back and then we're constantly struggling.
So that's one of the things that I'm going to ask the planners to take into consideration,
you know, roll up the streets and infrastructure when there's downtimes in your economy either
and so I think we need to think about that and make sure that we're providing a consistent
annual service level that we can afford.
So we're going to look at the redesign in two phases.
We did phase one.
We need to deploy phase one by March and then let it start running and reassess and typically
you look at assessments about every six months.
You're looking at data every day, every week, every month.
You don't want to tweak the service too often because then you confuse your customers but
every six months we're looking at it and making key decisions.
So on around between June and probably August, we'll come back to the DCDA board with a comprehensive
assessment of what we're going to do and it's all these other badges that we have here.
So that's the redesign process.
Configuring GoZone, the app, there's some interesting things that we can do with that
to actually tie these two systems into a system that can be accessed and then use this virtual
platform to give riders choices because we all like variety and choices.
Wait a minute, let me understand this.
So GoZone could increase fixed route use, right, because you're interacting with the
app.
Both directions.
That informs you that you have an option.
Yes.
So that's the thought, adjusting the GoZone pricing.
So right now, we'll talk about pricing next, of how this can possibly work.
If you recall, we did a promotional price on GoZone to get people to ride it and that's
a very normal thing.
In a lot of cases, when you launch a new service, it's free and we didn't feel like free was
necessary so we said, well, let's make it half of what a trip would cost for fixed route.
So right now, part of the reason we see so much use of GoZone is because it's half the
cost of fixed route and that's actually the inverse of how you would want to think about
GoZone.
It's more flexible.
There are some mileage-based scenarios that everybody, Lyft, Uber, everyone is making
it mileage-based.
The more you use it, the higher the cost, it's logical, but we're not doing that.
So pricing has actually moved people, in my opinion, heavier to the use of GoZone, which
is really what we want and we want to do this for six months.
But what are we going to do in the future?
And then deploy this concept of intermodal use through a technology platform that's optimizing
consumer choices and helping shape consumer behavior.
So the software already has the ability to pick up key points of interest that's already
inherent in the application.
The good news is that VIA has all the platform and technology to do what we need to do so
they're not going to have to write new code and go through all the bug fixes and all the
things that you typically do with new software deployments.
It's just applying it to our situation and leveraging that app to put points of interest.
In this case, the hubs, the transfer points would become points of interest.
So it helps you kind of plan where you are and where I can pick up a fixed route at a
lower cost.
Pricing can be a really powerful tool.
We can put some hard physical parameters in where a lot of transit agencies I mentioned
before, they'll do a pick and replace, they'll say we're running fixed routes, it's not effective
or efficient.
Let's eliminate that and put a go zone in there because it's going to be less expensive
and provide.
But it also has this concept that it would connect into a fixed route system.
And that's the way transit agencies across America are looking at things.
It was also some discussion on our board about putting a virtual fence, if you will, between
the two systems.
So let's say Route 7, within a quarter mile of Route 7, we wouldn't operate a go zone
because we don't want them competing with each other.
Well part of the issue is depending on your origin and destination, you may not, while
your pickup point might have been close to Route 7, it may not end anywhere near Route
7 and therefore Route 7 can't really provide that trip.
But by geo-fencing, you can actually, according to VIA, it's less effective than allowing
pricing to give people choices.
So we don't necessarily want people to not have the ability to take a longer trip.
But if you're going to take the resources away from others, you should be paying more
for that resource because it's a longer trip.
And generally, VIA feels that four miles and below is a very efficient way for them to
pick people up and aggregate them and take them where they need to go.
The model really works.
As you start getting into five, six, seven miles, the longer the distance on the trip,
the less effective it can be in aggregating people because not everybody wants to go that
far and you can only do so many route deviations to drop people off and pick them up before
you're sitting there looking at your watch going, "Wow, it's taking me forever to get
where I need to go."
So it actually, the longer the trip, you would think, "Well, maybe that's more efficient
because you can pick up and drop off a lot of people," but actually makes it less efficient
for them.
So that's kind of how the two work.
So using pricing as a model, how do we use it to maximize the fixed route and the utilization
of their fleet so they can stay more concentrated, more effective?
And then how do we make sure that through the planning process, it's less expensive for
the riders to move toward transit hubs and use of the infrastructure that's already laid
down and paid for on behalf of the agency and for the communities that we serve.
So that's kind of the logic of how do we go from where we are to where we want to go.
- And this is all Allison's idea?
It's amazing.
- So the hub discount is, this is kind of how we're thinking about it.
And again, this is not laid in stone.
It's how we're going to progress through the thought process here.
So we're going to introduce this concept of hubs where you have connection points throughout
the fixed route service and throughout the city, where you would generally have GoZone
fixed route.
This is where planning and design between DCTA and the city become interesting because
if we know where these hubs are, then we can start planning sidewalks and benches and a
lot of other things that will tend to have people want to congregate there and that when
you do those sorts of things and lay down that type of infrastructure, it makes some
interesting opportunities for development around there in those specific areas.
So all that needs to be planned.
But the general idea is we create these hubs and then we discount pricing-wise to go to
a hub and transfer onto the fixed route service for those longer distance rides.
And concentrate the GoZone onto smaller trips that can be more efficient.
- I want to sort of point out that even with the mileage-based pricing, even if you were
going from one side of the city all the way to the other, even if it's a very long ride,
this would still be less expensive than Uber or Lyft.
- Correct.
Yes.
That just depends on pricing models that the board decides on.
- But generally speaking, some of the challenges at Uber and Lyft, they have what they call
surge pricing.
So depending on capacity and demand, we're suffering from the same thing.
It shows up with your wait times.
If that wait time gets too big, they raise the pricing on you.
That's probably not how you want to do that as a community.
So introducing this concept of distance-based, where if you're going beyond a certain travel
distance, the application will say, "Well, you can take that trip, but here's how much
it's gonna cost."
We still don't have the details defined, but basically the general concept is whatever
the base fee is for bus, we would make the base fee for GoZone so that all services are
equal.
But if you're going over a certain distance and it's not leveraging the fixed route system,
after you go past let's say four miles, there's a fee per mile, maybe it's 50 cents per mile.
So as you get to five, six, seven miles, your trip may actually cost you more, and it's
not intended to deny you service, it's just intended to make it more cost-friendly.
And what it allow for is consumers that have discretionary income and time on their hands
to make decisions on whether they wanna take a longer trip using one service or to use
how many people travel in larger municipalities across multimodal systems and transfer to
get ultimately where you need to go.
And we allow it to be a consumer behavior choice.
So that's kind of the concept.
And going back to, I think something that has been discussed on this council was, "Well,
why don't we make the fixed route system free?"
This would be a way to look at either deeply discounting the fixed route system or making
the fixed route system free and making GoZone, you know, charging a fee to get onto the fixed
route service.
We're not making a recommendation at this point, it's just for illustration purposes.
But the idea would be that you discount your fixed route at least 50% over what your base
fee would be for getting people in areas where fixed route doesn't exist so that you can
move more people onto the system.
Again, we don't wanna necessarily deny people that wanna use the service to get from one
point to the other because for a lot of reasons the number of hours it would take or the minutes
that it would take to get from one side of town to the other is not something they can
easily do and they wanna take that trip.
We certainly wanna provide the trip, it should cost more to do that.
And generally speaking what we hear from VIA is that that's a very good way to allow travel
patterns to change to let consumer behavior and individuals financially make the decisions
on how they wanna traverse the area.
So the good news again is that the software already has the capacity, we'd have to configure
the software differently and have a conversation with VIA about pricing of the app and that
sort of thing.
But generally speaking, what you would see is on your app, depending on where your destination
ultimately is, we have the ability to show multiple modes of service or if you're just
too close to a fixed route and it doesn't make sense, we would provide the pedestrian
or traveler a path to get where they need to go so there's a lot of flexibility in the
system.
But generally you would want to have an application that would say well you can walk, it'll take
you this long, you can take a cab, it'll take you this long.
Nationally I don't think anybody has a great app at this point that includes pricing so
that you can do multimodal trip planning with all these different public and private sectors
but this gets us a long way there.
I could think of an app, Google Map, you can go to pretty much any city in the world and
it'll give you the options.
As far as I'm aware though, Google Maps doesn't include pricing though.
Yeah.
It'll take you, I don't know the latest version but when I looked at it before it'll say you
can take Uber to your destination and here's how much it's going to cost, if you select
that it takes you over to the Uber app and then you can do the transaction.
What we're talking here is having it aggregated so that through your financial wallet you
can pay once and distribute the funds to these different modes.
But would it be visible to Google Maps as well so that you can access it either way?
Is it visible to Google Maps?
I'll have to double check on that.
I mean you could see how that would be, a lot of people would enter that way and then
they'd end up getting linked into your app.
So ultimately what we're working on with TriniMetro and Dart is integration through their, through
Dart's application called GoPass and it has a front end which is an application like this.
It also has a financial transaction back end, a clearing house if you will.
And so when you tie your payment method to the system, it'll help you trip plan and
book it and do one transaction and then distribute the money how it needs to go.
The other benefit of working with Viya is that TriniMetro is already working with Dart
to integrate Viya's application with GoZone.
We also have a project on our books to do the same thing.
Oh that's great.
So I can say I want to go somewhere in Dallas and it'll give me all the pieces including
Dart.
Or someone from Dallas can, when they're coming to school at UNT or shopping here or entertaining,
they'll be able to use the app of their choice.
Hopefully we're going to get to that in 2022?
I was wrong about Google Maps, it does include, I'm like looking right now.
It does include pricing, yes.
I know it's part of world hegemony but you can't fight it forever.
But if you select it, I think, at least the older version that I was looking at, it wasn't,
I don't think you could actually do the transaction through Google, maybe they've upgraded that.
It'll link you into the, so it's sort of seamless.
Yeah, there's not currently a link to DCTA, there is a link to Lyft, but it does show
what the fare would be if you used DC, like Route 7 to get, that's what I'm looking at
right now.
I mean they're constantly making platform upgrades to use the Google wallet to say oh
I want to take the train and then transfer and use Uber and then pay for that entire
transaction one time.
I don't know that they're there yet.
That's kind of what I'm talking about.
Hopefully with this app at some point we'd be able to do that.
I think that's it.
So next steps, that was it with regard to the plan.
I believe this is my last slide.
I can certainly make it that way.
This is the timeline that we were talking about before.
So folks are like hey, let's, okay, we made the decision, let's start.
Well, we need a few months to make those changes, put new signs out there, put messaging out,
let everybody know about new Route 5 and the changes all because it's fairly disruptive
to ridership.
Typically when you make these kind of changes you'll see ridership dip for a little bit
and then it'll start going back up.
So this is what's planned.
The board approved the changes.
We analyzed all that data, made a decision in December.
By March we'll deploy all the new routes.
We'll talk about the new fare structure.
We just went through all that.
How do we price this?
What are the recommendations?
There's a new five-year American community service, I think that's the name of it, database
that kind of shows where all the trends and neighborhoods and a lot of rich, rich data
comes from.
That's supposed to be available in March so we'll be able to use that as we do this
comprehensive analysis to determine where we might want to tweak some of these routes.
A lot of the work will be on the app integration and make these hubs come to life and where
are we going to put them.
So a lot of conversations with your community, with our board about that and then hope that
once we understand all that we can understand the impacts of the budget.
Our budget cycle, usually by June we have the rough draft.
We go from June to August fairly rigorously through the budget so we'll understand the
impacts of all that.
With respect to budget, just one additional piece of information, with a new trillion
dollar infrastructure act approval, there is a very large set aside for additional funding
to transit.
It looks like we'll get somewhere between two to three million dollars in additional
federal operating assistance annually, so that can certainly help deploy this service
and things that we want to do collectively with connections to trails and making sure
that our stops are accessible and sidewalks and all those things that we can plan together.
So that concludes the briefing, I'm happy to answer any additional questions that you
might have.
After a certain number of minutes, it can't be called a briefing anymore, it's a longing.
It's no longer a briefing, it's a longing, yes.
Can you speak a little bit to how exactly we're going to be communicating about the
route and schedule changes to riders?
We have a multi-faceted communications process.
We have rider alerts that go out, people can sign up to rider alerts, the people that typically
use the service are already being notified of the discontinuation of the routes.
We use multi-faceted communication strategy with publications, social media, on our website.
We hold social services roundtables so that all the social services are aware.
We typically go out to locations around the community and do community outreach at libraries
and different locations around our member cities so that they're aware of it, but we
try to use every media outlet that we can.
Typically through the Debt and Record Chronicle, Across Timbers Gazette, we do mailings in
utility bills just to notify people any which way we possibly can to get the word out about
the changes.
We also put placards and lead behinds and vehicles so that people are aware of it, open
to other suggestions, but that's typically what we do.
Will there be information posted on the buses themselves?
Yes, that's what I was looking at earlier, the placards and lead behinds on buses.
The first piece is we're notifying people of the changes, then the future piece of this
will be once we create a new comprehensive service process.
We have an obligation to go out to the community.
It's a challenge.
I can tell you across most transit authorities, you'll typically have residents that will
say, "Well, we didn't know anything about it," and yet we try every which way through
board meetings, through these types of briefings, to get information to folks.
Folks that come here and say they're not aware of it yet, some of them are on our community
outreach, citizens' advisory teams.
We do the best we can, so again, we're always willing to work with our stakeholder communities.
Other things that we could do is certainly post it on your website so that folks that
are on your municipal websites also have contact to the notifications.
Council Member Byrd?
It just so happens that I'm going to be involved or with a community meeting tonight, so I'll
be very proud to be able to give them a bit of information, a little summary of what I've
heard today.
I'll ask that you all maybe put together a little summary packet for people like us if
we're going to be meeting with parts of the community, and if there's any more detailed
information, we can send them to where you are.
I've taken copious amounts of notes, pages here, but when I go and meet with them tonight
and tell them that I've sat here in this meeting and have gotten a bit of information, it will
be helpful.
I can tell you which area I'm going to be meeting with.
I'll look forward to connecting with you all and asking you all to put a little summary
about what's happening in that area for me, so I appreciate you putting that out there
for me because I was going to ask about it, but you jumped ahead and that's a great thing.
I just want to thank this committee and the cities, all our member cities and non-member
city board members.
The level of engagement has been absolutely phenomenal.
In many ways as a CEO, sometimes you don't want the level of engagement.
I don't look at it that way because to the core, what the team hears from me often is
we have to never forget why we're here.
Those four pillars of our mission statement, moving people, making the communities more
livable to the extent that we can help support economic development and improve air quality,
we're certainly willing to do that.
We will be meeting with our board.
I'm excited to say it's been a few years due to COVID, but we're going to go off and talk
about strategy.
One of the things that we'll be bringing up as staff is just environmental.
What is our approach to the environment?
What do we want to do?
I think there's a general interest in looking at electrification and hydrogen and other
alternative sources of energy that can help us improve air quality.
Ultimately, we're here to move more people for your communities and to make your communities
more livable.
We can't do that unless we have a high level of engagement.
It's been wonderful for me and for our staff to have that passion and the interaction on
the board.
We're here to serve you.
I just want to offer my thanks to all of you for that engagement.
It's the most optimistic I've felt about public transit in Denton in a long time.
I just really love the way you've worked with our input and the analytical way you're trying
to create a more complete solution.
It's just awesome.
I have a couple of thoughts to tack on as we move toward closing.
We clearly heard there's an opportunity to knit together into the mobility plan more
consciously the public transit part.
I think one way to think about it may be from the ADA point of view.
I know you're already thinking about bike and you're already thinking about pedestrian,
but the ADA part isn't always so obvious.
Really this network -- well, actually there's a little question embedded in there.
Are we doing good with getting GoZones that are able to carry people who have wheelchairs
and so on?
I know that was part of the concept, but I've heard that there was maybe difficulty getting
enough units on the street.
The challenge was we had a few accidents that were wheelchair equipped that had the lifts
on them.
Our plan with VIA was eventually to look at transitioning some of the access service onto
the platform.
We have a couple of options on how we might do that.
We might leverage our platform, use our drivers, because of the high touch, high training that's
required for door-to-door as opposed to curb-to-curb service.
We communicated with our board that we want to tap the brakes on that a little bit to
give VIA time, give us time to mature the service before we take that big leap, because
that's a really important service to get right.
Is there someplace you hope to end up solving, yes?
Yes.
What we've seen with some of the other services that we've offered to communities that are
not fully engaged in transit, fully committed, they're toe-dipping, they're getting folks
that are elderly, disabled using the service in their communities, there's a small percentage
that actually require the Lyft's infrastructure on the vehicles, that you can serve a community
very effectively if you have a handful, but their primary objective is to carry folks
that need that service, but when they're not, and if you look across the country, that's
the most expensive type of mode of service to provide.
It's usually almost two times the cost to deliver those trips because you're just not
putting as many people on the vehicles.
The hope is with this platform, when they're not taking a person, let's say, to a dialysis
center, they can also be integrated into the network and deliver services.
It's in the budget, it's not budgeted, let me restate that, it's in the contract.
We're already expending a significant amount of funds on that service.
As we start reshaping our service, it'll give us an opportunity to look at that and figure
out how we make that more integrated, but ultimately, my mother, when she used the same
type of service for dialysis for over seven years, and had it not been for that, her quality
of life would have been diminished significantly, and I know how vital it is to get it right
and to make it accessible, to not deny trips, and while we always want to look at efficiency
and effectiveness measures, there are certain groups of the population that absolutely need
to rely on it, and federally, we have to comply and deliver those trips, not deny those trips.
So, there's a little sensitivity, but my hope is the benefit in integrating those types
of trips is that it actually creates a better quality of life for everybody.
With our systems now, you have to book your trips, in some cases, days or weeks in advance.
Folks should not have to do that.
They should be able to use their phone and get a trip.
Yeah, I don't plan that far ahead.
I don't see where others should have to go.
I don't think that far ahead.
I don't know that anybody can effectively plan that far ahead, but where we can, we
want to make quality of life an important thing, and having that flexibility and availability
is important.
So, we do have a desire to get there.
Well, when I talk about mobility plan, we're talking about a long-range planning integrated
with a comprehensive plan that's supposed to be a 20-year look, whether you can really
look 20 years ahead, I don't know, but long-range is the point.
So, I was just saying that maybe that really is the, understanding we don't have the solution
all worked out yet, but that that's the ADA overlay on mobility plan.
How do you get around?
Maybe that's really public transit.
And then a related question is, who vets, do you have someone in your organization who
vets these changes in routes for Title VI issues, or that's something Nathan would
contribute to?
We have both.
We have internal staff and we use consultants to look at Title VI changes, to make sure
that we're not missing things, that we're using an independent source to walk through
those changes.
And there's rules about what level of change are you making, and how does that impact,
to make sure that we're not having a, we're not creating a disadvantage or disparate impact
on anyone in the population.
And we went through that process when we were looking at GoZone versus FixRoute.
But as you start thinking about making major modifications, it's always good to ensure,
you can do the analysis internally, but we use a combination of internal staff and consultants,
just because we don't want to hang on to people throughout the year to do that task, so we
outsource that when necessary.
I'm impressed by your ability to just stand that long.
My last little thing I'll, I said it to you before, but I'll say it every opportunity,
so it's like advertising, and maybe eventually it'll make it come true.
Big fleet powered by Denton Renewables, that would be the, that would be amazing.
We're already talking about that.
It's something that we will.
Putting in the Denton Renewables part.
Discuss with the board, and part of the contract with VIA is to introduce electric vans, recognize
that a big bus fleet that's built purposefully for carrying transit, folks in transit, those
vehicles will last about 12 years.
Your cutaways are probably seven years, your minivans are three years or less, but as we
start expanding the fleet, I don't like, and it's not very practical with transit to make
draconian changes, so you want to start introducing and growing and shaping things, but I'm certainly
interested in having that conversation when the time is right about charging stations
and electric fleets.
I mentioned the powered by Denton Renewables.
Thank you so much.
Is there anything else, we're good?
All right.
Thank you so much.
I just want to repeat the commendations to DCTA staff and our consultants.
I'm so incredibly impressed that you balanced so many conflicting concerns and needs and
came up with a proposal that really addresses almost every concern that we had as a council,
so excellent work on that.
Well, I'm glad to hear that.
Again, we're here to serve you.
I'll make sure that message gets back to staff.
Thank you.
Okay.
Thanks.
All right.
Just zooming right along, let's do item D, Receive a Report and Hold a Discussion Regarding
the City of Denton's Proposed Projects for the 2022 DCTA Transportation Reinvestment
Program or TRIP Funding Cycle.
Thank you, Mayor Proto, Nathan George, Capital Projects Engineering.
I was able to get my remarks down to 90 minutes when we went through this and I'm just kidding.
We're here today to talk about the proposed TRIP projects.
This will be our second group of projects that will go through the TRIP process, so
we have gone through our first year, but these will be the second round that we're putting
forward for funding from DCTA, the group that was just here.
So I'll walk through just briefly a little bit of background on the TRIP initiative.
So again, this is the second year.
These investments provide additional transit supporting benefits in those mobility aspects
that we were just talking about, supporting sidewalk infrastructure, providing improvements
along our routes that come through the city.
It's a budget set aside that DCTA allocates and 95% of those funds go to the locality,
5% are reserved so they can administer the funds for these projects.
Project eligibility, I would say it's a little bit of an evolutionary process based on what
we just heard because it had been based on proximity to fixed route transit.
We're approaching that this year, the GOZONE is an aspect of the projects we're putting
forward, so I'll highlight those in some cases as we go through the project specific recommendations.
It has to be within our geographic boundaries.
Clearly, we're focused more in the core area of the city and we're a large city, so that's
not a difficult nexus to bridge.
Located within a quarter mile of the fixed bus route or A train in some cases, I'll highlight
that maybe there isn't transit there today, but GOZONE is supportive in those areas so
that sort of makes that connection of our sidewalk connectivity and GOZONE is showing
like a high concentration in certain areas and then demonstrate that the project is financially
sound.
Those are the criteria they look for as they're reviewing the applications that we put forward
and we've made our own assessment of which projects we're strong enough to put forward
before mobility committee and then ultimately in front of council.
This is a list of the projects that we're putting forward.
We understand from DCTA that our allocation in the next round will be around $3 million,
so we put together an application of these projects that in total amount to $3 million
and then showing what the project costs will be along with the financial commitments that
the city has already made.
A lot of these projects are we're proposing funding within existing capital projects.
Another important annotation to this program is that we have to apply for reimbursement,
so it's not front loaded cash, but it's actually a reimbursement of city dollars that after
we have expended that cash and apply for reimbursement, we received the funding back.
A lot of these projects are existing projects and we're applying for a portion that would
be transit supportive, the sidewalks and connectivity enhancements as parts of those projects and
in some cases those are in addition to the scope of the project that we've included some
additional accessibility improvements and I'll walk through each of those specifically in
the following slides.
So the first project is the Mayhill Road extension phase two, this is a major mobility project
in the city, it provides improved ADA accessibility improvements throughout the area that's in
the DCTA Med Park area nearby to the station, so there will be a lot of accessibility enhancements
with this project.
It includes a major structure that will cross over the DCTA rail, so that will provide a
great separated crossing of the actual A train rail itself and it also improves connectivity
to the DCTA rail trail.
There are a lot of benefits with this project, it's a pretty, I would call it a pretty slam
dunk project that it does serve a lot of these mobility benefits.
The mapping that's shown here reflects the current DCTA fixed route transit service,
so just want to highlight that some of those routes will be modified or changed or eliminated,
but in this case the A train station is not going anywhere, so just wanted to point that
out to keep in mind on the next few slides.
The Southeast Denton A is a bundle of street improvements as part of the 2019 Street Reconstruction
Bond.
In this area we were already working through design, this is a project that we're getting
ready to move forward into construction next year, as part of the design process a number
of mobility enhancements, pedestrian sidewalk improvements or repairs were identified, we
were actually able to make some additional improvements that will tee up future sidewalk
construction, there wasn't funding or time to get those sidewalks into that package,
but at least we're going to be able to make those, tee up those enhancements that we can
come back and build sidewalks a little bit more easily without intersection improvements
by constructing some bump outs with the project when it moves forward next year.
So we're putting that project forward for funding, it's not a huge need but it is certainly
a very worthwhile project to allocate those dollars to and it's something that's going
to hit the ground really soon, so we felt that was a very meaningful project to include
in the application.
Southeast Denton B is a little bit later in terms of the schedule that's not been designed
yet, but it includes a number of additional sidewalks outside of that Southeast Denton
A core area and there are a lot of enhancements to close small sidewalk gaps, to repair maybe
deficient sidewalk ramps, so there are a lot of additional mobility benefits that we'll
see by including that in this application as well.
So we look at Southeast Denton A and B as sort of a tandem package but they will be
delivered separately, so those are two projects that we're putting forward.
The Union Pacific Railroad or UPRR Quiet Zone Pedestrian Improvements are for me one of
the most important projects in this application package.
Crossing the rail today is not very amenable, in some cases not at all accessible, so providing
those safe crossing locations, McKinney today there are sidewalks but they can't get across
the tracks if you have mobility limitations, so that's critical from an ADA perspective.
Hickory and Sycamore Streets are clearly two of our more important downtown connections
between the train station and our downtown, so that's a really important project to secure
additional funding.
The project was being scoped as just a Quiet Zone project, and we're in the process of
re-scoping that with UPRR to include the pedestrian improvements, so really important to set that
funding aside and to make these improvements so we have a more accessible downtown.
And you'll notice a theme, there are a lot of connectivity enhancements that we're putting
forward that relate to downtown, and so this next one, McKinney and Austin Street sidewalks,
so this is part of our sidewalk program, so that existing sidewalk work plan that we're
delivering, these are projects that are part of that package.
These two sidewalks are included in the 2018 CIP package, the design's been completed.
Again, a very easy project to put forward because we're ready to go to construction,
so setting those or submitting for the funding support for those projects will be a big benefit.
And this will be along the south side of McKinney, so it's near the police station, City Hall
East, and then Austin Street closes a small gap that's in downtown.
Carroll and Locust Street sidewalks are smaller improvements, but they'll make a pretty big
impact.
They'll talk about Carroll Boulevard again in a little bit, but this is a small segment
between Oak and Hickory that would be constructed, and then along Locust Street between Parkway
and McKinney, so two missing sidewalks that are pretty important from a connectivity perspective,
and I'm also looking at Locust from connectivity for bike perspective, so there are a lot of
benefits to continuing to focus in downtown and closing some of these gaps.
The Loop 288 sidewalks, so this is a project that we feel is incredibly important from
an accessibility perspective because the junction facilities under construction, the connection
that are daily bred in the missing sidewalks along Loop 288, even though it is a text-dot
roadway, those mobility benefits are going to be huge.
This is also along some of those realigned transit routes that were just briefed in the
prior presentation.
So having that enhanced connectivity is going to serve not only the junction, but also the
mobility needs of the neighborhoods in this area, so that'll be a huge improvement, and
we felt that was very worthwhile.
This is not a project, not a current project, so we're putting this forward as a new design.
Additional downtown sidewalks, so these are in the 2019 sidewalk work plan, or CIP sidewalk
work plan.
Again, we have completed designs for these projects.
They're ready to move forward into construction.
It would be improvements on Industrial Street, Mulberry Street, Piner Street, and Russell
Streets, so a lot of north-south connectivity.
We have a little piece that loops around on the Elm as well, so there's just a lot of
additional connectivity in the area around Industrial Park or on our western side of
downtown.
So great mobility benefits that would be achieved there.
Going back to the sidewalk work plan, so we looked at our four opportunities to introduce
new projects based on our pedestrian potential index, or PPI.
One of the hot spots that we found is the Parvin Street sidewalk.
It's adjacent to our Bernard Street sidewalk project, and it would close a gap in the area
of Deena Park, so we felt that was an incredibly beneficial project that would improve connectivity
in this neighborhood.
This is one of those locations where we don't have existing transit service in the area,
but we did see a high amount or a good concentration of GoZone activity in this neighborhood,
so there would also be potentially benefit for improving GoZone operations if they were
picking up at the corner, folks could more easily access Bernard Street if they live
farther west in the community.
So there's certainly benefits, there's also a school in this area, so there are a lot
of potential drivers for needing to make this street a priority.
The Carroll Boulevard sidewalk, so I mentioned previously a small piece between Oak and Hickory,
this would complete the sidewalk north of Oak Street to Parkway.
The big benefit to, this is another one of those locations where we had really high pedestrian
potential index.
We've also got sidewalk connectivity that comes over to where McKinney intersects Carroll,
but that intersection is not controlled by signal, doesn't have crossing accommodations,
and we do have accommodations at Oak and Parkway, so anybody who lives or walks west of Carroll
Boulevard would see a huge benefit to having a sidewalk on the west side of Carroll Boulevard
so they can travel north or south to cross the street at a signal controlled intersection.
So really, in this case, provides, in addition to the mobility benefit, it's a safety benefit
to provide that safer accessible route to get to a signal across Carroll Boulevard if
you're coming or going from downtown.
So that's a project that has a lot of potential benefits.
And the Windsor Drive sidewalks, which I believe is the last project that we're going to present
here.
So this is an area where we have, again, some Safe Routes to School projects, we've got
a developer project in this area and a gap along the north side of Windsor Drive.
It's roughly a little bit west of Belle Avenue and almost will complete a gap from Belle
to Stewart.
So there's a lot of benefit to just completing or prioritizing completing that last little
piece of sidewalk that will close out some gaps, improve connectivity into the, I believe
this is the DC6 route, so that will be a big benefit for anybody who's traveling by foot
in that area.
There's also a middle school here, so there are a lot of additional potential benefits
there as well.
So those are the projects we're putting forward for the 2022 application.
Of course, we want to brief you for your input and any direction that you have, we'll incorporate
that before we go to council.
We'll present the final recommendations to city council and request a resolution to adopt
or to put forward that application.
When we have that resolution, the grant administration team will put together a package that will
be submitted to DCTA for their review and approval.
And then moving forward, just like with our current TRIP funded projects, we'll be monitoring
to make sure that all of our eligible reimbursement funds are tracked and applied so we can make
sure that we're responsibly spending those dollars.
And that concludes the presentation.
- I just want to point out there was no animation used and I'm really disappointed.
- I'm sorry, I didn't get to use any of my cool graphic capabilities, but we did prepare
time, you know, lower the expectations.
- Yeah, I have a question.
These all sound like great projects.
I certainly don't dispute the need for sidewalk improvements in the Denia area.
Based on my understanding of the TRIP funding requirements, it doesn't seem to me like it
would be eligible, but why was that included in this proposal?
- I would say it's not in clear keeping with how they've outlined the program currently
because we want the GoZone to be transit supported, if you will.
That is an area that both has a lot of potential for pedestrian activity, so that, you know,
refocusing or utilizing that sidewalk work plan resource that we have to drive our projects
was part of why it was put forward, but also seeing the concentration of GoZone activity.
That was an area that used to be transit served, there was a transit stop along the proposed
sidewalk route, so, you know, clearly if we can provide that supporting infrastructure
that will allow people to more easily use the GoZone service, I think that a strong
case can be made that that's a need and it also serves access to those community resources
that are in that area as well, the park and the school.
- This really opens up a lot of qualifying terrain when you think of, you know, where
GoZone can go.
- Right, yeah.
I just, I don't know, have you confirmed with anybody at DCTA that GoZone counts as
the quarter mile?
- I have not confirmed, that's something we can certainly go back and ask for their confirmation.
I believe the intent, as their stated intent, is to provide more service using a GoZone
platform or to expand their reach, so to speak.
It should allow us to treat these trip applications similarly that we're going to expand our accessibility
to serve the areas where we see they're generating ridership, so we can pair those dollars and
investments with where we're seeing ridership.
- If they have already, I couldn't quite tell if they have, but if they have already figured
out what areas are going to be designated as hubs, I think that's probably, you know,
they're not going to speak to their mindset.
- I think when Raymond was talking about hubs, he was talking about fixed route hubs, so
like the DDTC is a hub, and like heavily utilized bus stops, but there are no bus stops in the
Dini area anymore, there's, I mean, there's going to be quite a lot of moderate to high
density development down around Rose Lawn and, you know, south of, in between Willowood
and Rose Lawn, and I think we could certainly justify maybe having a route that goes down
that way in the future, but there just isn't one now.
So as long as it's eligible, then yes, I'm in favor of it.
I just want to be sure.
- I would say we haven't received any explicit guidance beyond what was provided for last
year's applications.
They haven't released a call for applications yet, so, you know, we're proceeding based
on the understanding of how they're changing fixed route transit.
I would also say, you know, similarly where they are discontinuing service into those
fingers of the old routes where they extend, you know, service used to extend into those
communities that no longer does, that those are areas that would be potentially well-served
by the investments if they have like, if they have the potential to generate a high pedestrian
activity level.
But they just didn't generate enough ridership under a fixed route transit model to maintain
that transit service, but certainly those are areas that we would be looking at as well.
- Maybe consciously package it as a new concept, you know, GoZone hub for the neighborhood.
That's kind of what you have in mind, is a gathering point, a safer gathering point.
- Exactly, yes.
Or where might people be riding to, you know, a library, the Windsor example is close to
a library.
So we do have existing city facilities that are driving some of those, some of our attention
is being driven to where folks might tend to be trying to travel.
So downtown, clearly we have a lot of resources here, but in those other areas where it's
parks and libraries, those sort of draw our attention as well.
- Questions, comments?
- You know, as we're speaking, oh, this is what I would suggest, is that when you come
to city council, give us some visuals.
You know, as you were talking, I was in my head trying to figure out, you know, the direction
and all of that, but it'd be helpful to have a picture or two, to help us figure out what
we're looking at.
So I appreciate that part.
- Yeah, we, so the mapping.
- I mean, I know where the streets are and I know what they look like, but I had to go
in there and kind of figure it out.
- Yes, the mapping was prepared using the sidewalk park plan, so, you know, it gives
us a little more detail, but I can certainly grab some photos to put in the presentation.
- Also I'm concentrated right now on McKinney Street East.
I believe there are five or six apartment complexes, large apartment complexes, and
I do know that, you know, a few or two or three more are expected at some point to come
along the way, maybe, some conversation is probably going to happen that way if we're
going to continue to develop, and I was understanding that loop 288 is coming on board with the
sidewalk and we're making provisions for folks to kind of go around over to the new,
you know, facility, the junction location, but I'm just envisioning and walking
along McKinney Street and there's no sidewalks, there's no expansion, I understand that there
wasn't anything that was put into, you know, the plan for widening McKinney and, you know,
making it a bit more bike walkable friendly, so I guess that would be coming along as well,
but can you put sidewalks in without the big plan between McKinney Street and Woodrow,
you know, going over to 288, because there's no sidewalks there at all.
- Yeah, I'll defer the bulk of, like, what's the future along McKinney to Becky because
that's a conversation they're having.
I will tell you that as we were hearing the remarks about transit utilization and when
people are out riding, that McKinney Street is a street I travel on frequently, I see
a lot of transit ridership, I see a lot of folks walking, it is an area that, you know,
I feel there's a lot of need or emphasis to make it a more pedestrian accommodating corridor.
Unfortunately, we're looking at that corridor for future improvements that Becky can talk
about.
- Yeah, it's kind of like, oh, we need it now, but we know we gotta wait.
Also, going over to the new facility is going up Audra and hitting that, the Audra, going
from Audra to Audra and going out to 288 as well, that area certainly needs to be improved
if we're going to start requesting or suggesting homeless population to make their way there,
if they're walking or if they're driving or biking.
There's not any concentration on the Audra that goes east and west, you know, the other
side of Mingo.
So please add that to the conversation as well, and I'm just thinking about getting
folks coming off the train and if they're expected to go to that area, I'm not real
sure if they'll be met with the GoZone vehicle to take them there or will they have to bike
or walk there.
So just to add that to part of the conversation, some improvements definitely need to be made
between Mockingbird and 288 over there on that Audra area.
I know right now that they're building residential facilities over in that area as well.
So just wanted to put that out there right now.
And the other thing is, you know, like you said, the improvements over on McKinney, just
all the way down McKinney Street, we just have so much activity on that road and it's
a tight road.
So just adding the additional sidewalks is something that I think everybody's going to
really appreciate.
Could you address McKinney? Sure, so at this time, the section of McKinney Street between
the Woodrow-Audra intersection all the way to the Loop 288 and the city is actually submitted
that for a county bond package list.
We also will be looking at the possibility of putting that in a future CIP.
But at this time, it doesn't make sense to install sidewalk along that corridor knowing
that we don't have future right-of-way, we don't know what that ultimate cross-section
was going to be.
Because unfortunately, we need to look at the future right-of-way widths, the future
easements that need to be acquired, the utilities that need to be constructed in that area.
So although I agree that sidewalk is needed in that area, at this point, we want to see
when and help anticipate when that bond package would come through to really improve that
entire roadway cross-section. And I also wanted to mention in several of those areas where
you know there's current infrastructure plans going on, such as Audra that's between Mockingbird
and the Loop or other areas along McKinney.
As infrastructure is constructed with development projects, they're going to be required to
install and construct sidewalk in front of their frontage along those roadways.
So many of those areas are being filled in as they're doing those constructions. And
so what Nathan had looked at in many cases is where to fill in the gap between where
a development project might go in. That's what he did specifically along the loop is
just due south of the junction as a new development coming in. So they're required to construct
sidewalks.
So then we are looking at areas of which the development or existing sidewalk is not present
so that we can fill in those pieces. My concern was is that individuals would want to try
to walk across the loop. It's a decent rate of speed. There are not enough signalized
intersections in those areas. And I wanted to provide a safe passageway for them to get
from the junction all the way down to McKinney, across McKinney and back up to our Daily Bread.
In the future, there will be more than likely signals at the intersection of Audra and possibly
a signal at Hummingbird, which would provide for a safe passageway across Loop 288. But
at this time, TxDOT is not allowing any type of pedestrian beacons. And Nathan can speak
to that too. So we really wanted to look at what is the safest way to get folks from one
side of the roadway to the other.
And then if I could speak to the Audra area as well. So we do have a safe routes project
that's on Audra. So that will improve some, you know, add some sidewalks in that area
as well. There was a concentration, an area that we had a fairly high PPI that I would
have liked to include in this application. But one of the biggest challenges with putting
forward these projects, if we're putting forward something that's a new project, is if we haven't
had an opportunity to go to the public and receive feedback or input, it's really important
to have community support before we put these projects forward with that degree of uncertainty,
because then we're tying up those, we're applying to fund a project, those dollars get associated
with the project. If the project doesn't receive that support later on in the process, then
we have to go back to DCTA, explain that situation. So we tried to focus on projects that are
certain that we know these dollars will apply to what we're going to spend the money on.
And Audra just has a bit of uncertainty with things like acquiring right of way or which
side of the street will sidewalk beyond those sorts of things. So it feels like it will
be really important for us to have those conversations to tee up more projects for the next funding
year applications. So our FY 2023 will hopefully have more certain projects that haven't yet
been fleshed out based on our sidewalk work plan. So hopefully we'll see more opportunities
in some of those areas that we can apply for funding next year.
My one observation though, Ed, I mean, these are all great projects. It's just in the past,
it seemed to me, maybe I'm wrong, that the trip funding really funded whole sidewalk
projects that wouldn't otherwise happen. Whereas here it looks like, when I look at the funding
breakdown, it looks like a relatively minor amount of money in the total bill, the kind
of money that we do in contract extensions and amendments every week. It doesn't strike
me as, I'm just telling you truthfully my reaction, it doesn't strike me as truthfully
making projects happen that wouldn't otherwise happen. Am I wrong about that?
I would say in some cases the projects will happen faster because we fund on an annual
basis and some of these projects we can accelerate into construction a bit faster. I think that
would be one of my goals, is to use these dollars to seed projects, to move them forward
faster and get them in the ground more quickly and try and leverage those investments where
they're mutually beneficial to DCTA of course, but it also gets improvements that support
our community into the ground more quickly. My read of the room so far, and I'll ask
more formally, is we're going to say, yeah, go ahead, bring it to council, but that would
be my advice would be to point out what you just said. Even though it doesn't look like
that much out of the total, here's where it'll make a difference in speed. How is this incrementally
just not getting some money that's getting lost in the sauce?
I'll share the grants management team when we met with them, their observation was it
was great that we could fund so many projects. I think that's a real benefit of the approach
that we're putting forward this year is that we are spreading these dollars out to support
a lot of different projects, so it impacts different parts of the community which is
hopefully a real benefit to our residents and visitors.
My first instinct, because I kind of had that same thought and tell me if this is accurate
or not, it does seem like these requests are kind of for projects that probably would have
happened anyway even without trip funding, but I kind of assumed that that was because
we're taking such an aggressive approach to sidewalk projects now that we maybe haven't
taken in the past. Do you feel that's accurate or Becky do you feel that's accurate?
Okay sorry it took me a minute for it to turn green. I think that last year was the first
year that we put forward the DCTA trip program. We looked at the approach at that time was
to look at you know what are the projects in the areas where we think there are some
projects that maybe don't have all the funding that are the most high priority for the city.
I think this year the approach that we have used is to look at areas where there may already
be an existing project going on or being constructed or in design part of a construction, but that
we're looking at how can we add or supplement to those additional areas. So you know I really
think the approach that Nathan and others used at this time is to say we have an existing
project going on in this location we'd like to add to and add additional that did not
have the funding because I will remind you with the entire bond programs those are roadway
improvements only. They do not have sidewalk improvements included in any of the designs.
Similarly when he looked at all of the list of projects and Robin also worked on this
with him there are multiple sidewalk projects that need to be completed or that have a high
PPI score. So the approach this time was actually to use that sidewalk work plan that has been
developed that Nathan shared with you last month and approach that from the perspective
of where some of the areas where we really could get additional funding maybe it's additional
funding to support the funding that the city already has and get those extra benefits.
And so you know I feel like that maybe what we can definitely do is provide additional
resources to and explain during the presentation that you know the city has this amount of
funding we'd like to extend the funding and make it go to that next block or to that next
major roadway and by doing that then it provides that holistic project right. So maybe that's
the message that you're not hearing from the presentation and I think that really truly
adding some of these additional parts and pieces is going to provide for that entire
network and that's where pictures or visuals that you're discussing. And I'll tell you
I really wanted to look at the projects like the the loop 288 the junction the building
because I was concerned with individuals traversing in those areas. And so there's some things
like that that we have to look at we need to know what are all the projects that are
happening for the entire city and how do we approach those. So overall I think using the
PPI extending the projects that the city has with that additional funding it's like a change
order per se. It's like adding to an additional project so that you can get that complete
benefit that gets all the way to that next intersection versus just having parts and
pieces. So I also think that the approach that's been used this year knowing that you
know DCTA has had made many modifications you can even see today that some of the routes
that were presented today are different than some of the routes that we even have on the
maps that as they ever change we're looking at where can we make the most benefit in areas
and some of them may seem as small pieces but three hundred thousand dollars and Danny
sitting in the back is not something that's a part of an operational budget that he's
going to have that opportunity to make that improvement. So that's where we want to really
provide that that I guess more a more fluid project to get you from point A to point B.
Yeah thank you yeah that clarifies for sure. Hi I'm Robin Davis project manager I actually
deliver and get most of these sidewalks built and I just wanted to say that some of these
smaller amounts DCTA is one of the requirements is to have these things constructed I believe
three years something like that. So using the the trip funds helps us also free up some
of the 2019 sidewalk bond funds to be used towards projects that we can go ahead and
get in the design process and use the trip funding to help us go ahead and get them constructed
this kind of speeds up the process and spreads the money out further. Yeah well you know
I think that's an important point too I would just suggest you know just when you bring
it to council to just maybe even maybe even did it just didn't register me right no at
the beginning say one of our strategies is look at existing projects and add features
to them. Just it wasn't obvious to me that you're adding features to it's just like part
of the funding mix. That was kind of the communication of that table. So if you say that and then
in the project as you go through them you know here's what it was going to be and then
here in red is the additional thing that we're going to add on. Simple as that. Yeah I will
be sure to highlight some of those areas where we did you know several I touched on early
in the presentation so they may be a little more back of memory but certainly we can highlight
a bit more in you know how we looked at this from like a goals and objectives perspective
for this year's group of funds and then I can also highlight additionally where some
of these things just wouldn't have happened or I shouldn't say they wouldn't have happened.
Every time I talk to our project managers I recommend things and they are not in the
scope of the project. But there's features that wouldn't have happened. Exactly or they
may be outside of our budgets and it's you know overrunning our CIP budgets so you know
these are ways that we're recapturing some of those investments that we're going to make
or maybe there are things that we wouldn't have done or a project might have been extended
another five years. I guess this council would support either way but they'll do it with
greater enthusiasm if we do this. Well I look forward to having that conversation. We'll
take all your feedback and retool this a little bit before we go to council next month. Any
objection to bringing any of these proposals to council? Okay great. Thank you. Fantastic.
Thank you so much. All right we are up to item E staff report. Awesome so the staff
report is not actually on the screen so I'm going to ask you just to follow along with
me as I kind of talk through. So thank you for allowing me to give you an update on a
few items that we discussed in the last couple of meetings. So on Janney Street I know this
is something that councilmember Byrd brought forward during the October 15th mobility committee
meeting and councilmember Byrd requested the improvements to Janney Street near McKinney
including the installation of curb and measures to improve the visibility of trees that are
currently in the middle of the street and it is very interesting because it's one of
the only streets I've seen that have actually trees in the middle of the roadway and so
the portion of Janney in question will be fully reconstructed including the installation
of curb as part of that 2019 bond program. Mr. Seth Garcia is sitting in the back of
the room and he is the program manager for that project. The reconstruction of Janney
is currently scheduled to occur in the calendar year of 2024 and then on November 18th staff
actually installs several interim safety measure improvements to Janney including some reflective
pavement markings around the trees and additional reflective striping to draw the attention
along with installing a keep right sign to help and so those interim improvements made
and there's some pictures that are included in your packet and those were led underneath
the operation of Mr. Daniel Kramer that's in the very back of the room and he actually
had his traffic operations team work through that so hopefully that will help with some
of the updates and then when the actual road is reconstructed in 2024 that will provide
those additional improvement measures. The next item really came up as a part of the
conversation thank you Logan. Logan's gonna assist with getting the pictures updated there
you go. So the next item is actually the coordination with DCTA on upcoming capital projects and
really the I'm not gonna read there's a ton of information but really what I wanted to
ensure you as I know it was a comment that was made at the last meeting is we have reached
out to DCTA to discuss our outreach efforts with them and really we've worked through
multiple things I know you're all aware that Rachel Wood is the staff liaison for DCTA
she really attends all the the board meetings and is in or listens to and is on regular
communications with the DCTA staff. She's spending about 10% of her time right now just
addressing DCTA concerns so it is taking quite a bit of her her time to work through those
things but I know she is definitely making sure that she's providing that resource and
being able to answer questions and provide feedback. As you know we do the mobility committee
updates with the DCTA late leadership we hold stakeholder meetings where we're available
to answer any questions we currently have monthly meetings as you know with TWA, ATMA,
TxDOT and then we also have quarterly meetings which Robin Davis holds with UNT. Today we've
suggested with DCTA and they have not requested to schedule many type of regularly scheduled
meetings with our construction staff so we're open to that at any time and we've told them
that we're happy to coordinate with them and and have them involved. We are doing biannual
project drill down meetings we had these the last week of November where all stakeholders
are present to provide and receive updates. All of the project managers and program managers
go through every active project that we have and do a presentation. The last meetings that
we held were three days in a row we had 45 to 50 different individuals on them so they're
very highly attended and it helps share the message of all the projects that our team
has going on. The street closure report is something that comes out weekly y'all are
aware of that. Discussed didn't is also an area of which they can go on and look at any
projects at any time that's live on the city's website. We have the engaged in process which
I know you're all aware of. Of course the Friday report that weekly publication that
goes out to everyone and DCTA and other partner agencies can be added to the distribution
list at any time if they'd like to be so we add people all the time to the Friday report
who want to hear that additional information and then today we're actually doing a little
preview to the online construction capital projects construction map internally to the
city at our employee forum and January 3rd and that should say 2022 not 2021 so that's
a typo. A new GIS based capital projects construction map will be live where you can go in and look
at projects that are happening within the next 365 days they're either planned ongoing
or have been closed out within the next the next fiscal year or calendar year actually.
So there's multiple ways that we're providing updates and we've given those given all of
this information also to DCTA so happy to continue to engage with them at any measure
anyway. The next item was to look at the safety of the intersection of Parkway and Locust
and solar powered flash flashing beacons were installed on the stop signs at Parkway and
Elm so I mentioned this yesterday in the questions that you brought up Councilmember Byrd during
my presentation on the criteria manual traffic operations Danny's team in the back along
with capital projects engineering have been looking at and assessing you know other improvements
that may need to be made to Parkway and Elm and Parkway and Locust. Many of those improvements
are things that Nathan is looking at in that area with possible additional striping but
currently what we have been finding is folks that are traveling southbound on Elm Street
are traveling at a different speed than those in there they need that additional notification
so if you travel in that area you'll actually see the red flashing beacon on the top of
the stop signs at Parkway and Elm if you're traveling on southbound Elm and then of course
there's the signalized intersection project that's very close to being done it's been
flashing red for a period of time so I know they're working on getting that completed.
I will mention that what Nathan and there's some pictures Logan's showing you the picture
but I will mention that what Nathan is looking at right now and we've been discussing with
Danny and his team is a possible roadway diet from on Parkway from Carroll now really till
you get around the corner just north of that Denton I believe it's the Denton women's building
that's currently located right there so we're looking at a possible roadway diet in that
area along Parkway so those are some things that Nathan's looking at with some interim
steps that can be made from a striping perspective as striping projects come up we're evaluating
them a little bit differently just to see if there's any improvements that we can make
and then the last thing that was mentioned was to update the sidewalk work plan to have
more diverse images and Nathan has already corrected that sidewalk work plan to have some
additional images that provide individuals who are either disabled or have more diverse
type images with demographics culture atmosphere and so those have been updated and modifications
have made been made to the sidewalk work plan you'll see the sidewalk work plan on January
4th at the council meeting so we're looking forward to that so that's really all the updates
I have as far as the staff memo as far as future items currently we have addressed all
of them except for two one of them I just mentioned which was the improvements to Parkway
at Locust and Parkway at Elm and so we're still working through the possibilities of
that road diet and additional striping the other one is the update to the Bonnie brand
35 sequencing I know Mayor Pro Temulcer this is something that you brought up and we plan
to bring this back at the January 19th mobility committee meeting where another program manager
Kyle pedigo will be making making that presentation to be able to show you the construction time
frames and look at the the different sequencing for those two projects being under construction
at the same time to the work on 35 I'm sorry and how that timing relates to the critical
timing on 35 yes sir there we are currently evaluating comparisons between the Bonnie
Bray sections from 380 to basically 35 along Bonnie Bray versus the 35 construction and
when those two areas would be in construction at the same time looking at many different
evaluations and so yes we will be bringing that back to show you and and be able to kind
of show you some different opportunities in those areas so definitely on our radar and
we will be we've we've already had several presentations and worked through that internally
but want to be able to bring that back to you in January excellent so are there any
other items that y'all would like for us to I'm sorry go ahead sorry I just want to make
sure that we can remove all the other ones that are on oh yes ma'am I'm sorry so Logan
has added an additional column that says request to remove so you can see all of the ones which
I can't see that far but they all say yes minus number one which is Bonnie Bray to 35
and then number 11 that is the Parkway and Locust so we'd like to remove all the other
items as we feel like we have worked to address those but leave those two additional ones
on there so that we can bring those back to you in January yeah yeah but any any objections
to removing the ones that are indicated as complete or addressed no so remind me where
paisley oh paisley no don't don't remove that I don't see any thing that have gone forward
on between paisley and root that corner paisley and they'll talk to me about that we actually
made that update in the last month's presentation in November okay mobility in November okay
I'll have to go back and look at that if you feel like it needs to if you feel like we
haven't addressed that if you would please bring that to our attention in January we'd
be happy to add it okay yeah I'll just leave it on here it's no problem leave it on there
until I can look at it again absolutely yes ma'am also my folks over at Township 2 is
that on there Township 2 Dallas Drive they are concerned about the course and always
been concerned about that that northbound you know exit they are coming off of 35 they
are feeling feeling like and they are telling me that the traffic is still going a bit too
fast and then even going south as you're entering the freeway people are speeding up to get
on the freeway now so that is also a concern because now they need to get out of their
neighborhood and if they want to go across and get on the freeway there's an angle there
that they are that they're notifying me of so please add that to the list I'm not sure
if some little stripe what do you call those little speed speed stripes or something that
might help the traffic that's coming off the freeway to kind of slow them down that they
are entering into you know past a residential area you're referring to Dallas Drive Dallas
Drive okay to Teasley at least it's it's really fast on that roadway so I think the miles
per hour is 45 miles per hour coming off the freeway and then entering the freeway I'm
not real sure of how how fast we're allowing travels to we've looked at that from a traffic
study perspective but we'll continue to evaluate we can work with the police department that's
also a text art roadway that they're entering and exiting so we can discuss that with our
police department then also with text art so I don't have any concerns with evaluating
that to see if we can bring something back that helps explain that situation I do know
it goes from 45 to 35 when you are exiting because I have been welcomed with a speeding
ticket in that area we've been in contact with the police department about that stretch
of roadway it's been in a few Friday reports so they have it on their monitor that that
would be a nice road to be able to note as a speed trap if nothing else to help the psychological
you know the police are monitoring this area sure we'll continue we'll check in with them
to find out I know I remember you know us looking into that and working with PD but
we'll evaluate what they're finding in that area and they'll be able to pull their data
to see if there's something that needs to be done from a safety perspective or speeding
well I'll just say as long as a township to residents are connecting with me about their
concerns I'll continue to bring them back no problem happy to address otherwise I think
that's it for me I think that's correct the about item 8 maybe you can just remind me
I had the impression that there was a response and that Susie rumor and said are you sure
you looked at the right street she asked about whether the speed was looked at on Malone
or was it really on Crescent because she didn't notice it at the time did you get to the bottom
of that you're discussing item number eight yeah and we do believe that we have evaluated
the concerns that are in that area there is an additional intersection that we've been
asked to look at but I'm happy to leave that one on there also for us to go back and evaluate
but we do believe and we can make contact with Susie if necessary that's that'll be
my ass just okay sure and then I have an additional item that I'd like to address I am getting
conflicting stories from from different sources on the status of exactly what the description
is but the property and Riddell Street that could potentially be in affected by street
widening and one story I hear is this is a you know piece of city land that could be
appropriated for a tiny house village and could actually be zoned appropriately for
that and then the other story I'm hearing is absolutely not available it's the only
way to do a street widening I would just like to get you know like I would just suggest
if you all talk to Ron Mengida and just come back with a unified you know point of view
on what the status is sure I'd be happy to do so I've informed the city manager's office
of the Riddell area and what the plans are for the future Riddell expansion south of
Mingo Road but I'll be happy to discuss with Ron and we can provide an update that actually
shows a graphical representation of the schematic in that area so you can see what we're referring
to in the area where the tiny house village was going to go is going to go that's interesting
yeah well what I you know I'm content to hear whatever the combined unified sure happy to
do so you know descriptions thanks anything else anyone else yeah okay then but you seem
to want to tell us something though you're just standing there okay that's what you that's
an awesome place to be okay so we're up to concluding items and I don't think we usually
do them like on council but but if you want to announce that you already referred to the
meeting tonight yes I'd like to refer to the meeting tonight the southeast didn't neighborhood
is having a community meeting tonight at Mount Calvary Baptist Church which is located on
Wilson Street starting at 530 and now that I have some additional information you know
in regards to some mobility things I'd be very pleased to present those to the neighborhood
people there so we'll hope to see everyone I hope everyone has an opportunity to come
out from the neighborhood and I'll just look forward to it thank you it is on my calendar
anything else you good all right we will close the meeting at 1140 thanks everyone thank
Thank you.