>> Good evening.
Welcome to the special citizens bond committee advisory meeting
for June 13th, 2019.
It's 6 p.m. and we're going to go ahead and get started.
I believe we have quorum with at least,
I think now 13 members present.
The first item on the agenda is consideration
of the meeting minutes from May 30th.
Does anyone have any comments or amendments?
Go ahead.
>> I'd just like to offer one amendment on page four,
paragraph three.
It states a discussion followed
on leveraging approximately half a million dollars from federal
and state matching dollars.
I believe that is the wrong amount.
So I would suggest a discussion followed on leveraging bond funds
with 275 million federal and state dollars
for a total expenditure of roughly half a billion dollars.
>> Thank you for that correction.
Any other comments regarding that?
Okay. Any other general comments
about meeting minutes for May 30th?
Would anyone like to make a motion
to approve the minutes as amended?
>> So moved.
>> Second.
>> All right.
>> All in favor.
Any other comments or questions?
[ Inaudible ]
>> Any -- all right.
All in favor, say aye.
>> Aye.
>> Any opposed, same sign.
Minutes are approved.
All right.
Next is -- this is going to be a heavy lift tonight.
We got a lot of information to cover.
So we are going to take a break at a good breaking point
around 7 to rest our brains and our backsides for a minute.
And then we'll press on but we may go a little long tonight.
So there may not -- every question may not get answered
and the staff will be definitely tracking questions.
So this is the time to dig deep into these projects and feel free
to do your best to help thoroughly understand what is
being discussed.
I'm going to turn it over to David.
>> Sure. I'll just give a -- David Gaines, director of finance,
give a brief introduction.
As we head into this presentation,
this presentation is going to be slightly different
than the one that was on the agenda.
As we go along this process, we're going to sometimes --
costs are changing and different scopes are changing up to even
today with some of the roads that are on in the presentation.
So as Todd as this goes through the presentation,
he'll point out some of those differences.
But just so you're aware, there's a few new slides and a few changes
on the slides that were previously presented.
Following the meeting, we'll get those up later on the website
and have the agenda uploaded with the new presentation as well.
I'll turn it over to Todd Hellman,
our city manager for a couple minutes.
>> I just wanted to clarify tonight, after listening
to your comments at the first meeting, staff went back
and we've spent the last -- really up until about an hour ago,
spent the last couple of weeks reprioritizing the streets.
Somebody -- one of you had asked a question about, you know,
is there a way to prioritize these asks?
How would you think through them?
So you're going to be seeing our thought process tonight.
And obviously, the ones with the heavy federal leverage are going
to be the ones that we recommend the most.
But one of the debates we've been having internally,
and we want to include you in tonight, is just the issue
in terms of the local roads.
We had budgeted about $5 million, roughly a year,
for the local road program.
One of the questions that the council continues
to ask us is, you know, how do we continue moving up
and ratcheting up our OCI, the condition index or the streets?
And that's always a big issue with them.
So we went back and I met with the staff last week
and they have been feverishly putting together plans on trying
to attack those worst streets.
By the time we were done in five or six years, they've got a couple
of options for you, ways that we could scale the local road program
that would probably take adding some more money and dropping one
of the other roads out of the picture,
but to make a pretty marked difference.
So we think that was kind of the question we were asked the first time,
probably something that most people are interested in.
It's also got the advantage of having significant amount
of work done throughout the various parts of the community.
So we'd love to get your strategy on that tonight.
We will go back and rerun scenarios based on your comfort level,
your questions, but I wanted to at least kind of put a little bit
of context for how we're thinking this through
and what we need your feedback on.
I've also asked Todd, as we're continuing to go
through the design scope on Hickory Creek Road,
which will eventually tie 2499 into I-35W,
it's having some significant impacts
on the other major collector roads such as Ryan in terms of how wide,
how much capacity might be needed in the future versus just resurfacing it
because obviously we're anticipating now
with the modeling to be moving much more traffic along that four
to six lane highway down the road.
So that was also part of the reprioritization process,
thinking you might want to take the strategy we presented first,
maybe in a different route, no pun intended.
So at this point, I just wanted to set that framework there.
We're going to continue listening to you,
listening to the feedback that you're giving us.
We'll continue reprioritizing, running one of scenarios.
But I wanted to at least provide that context based
upon your initial comments in that first meeting.
>> Good evening.
I'm Todd Estes.
I'm the City Engineer.
I'm also Director of Capital Projects for a good number
of these projects we'll get delivered out of.
We have with us Danny Kramer who's the Deputy Director
for Streets and Drainage Operations.
There's a good reason they're up here.
They're not in trouble.
But they have a lot of information
that you might ask tonight.
And then Pritam Deshmukh is the Deputy City Engineer.
He's over the vast majority of these capital projects
and he's direct responsible.
He's making sure they get put in the ground amongst other things.
So tonight we're going to talk about proposition two,
more specifically the streets portion.
So the biggest drivers for the roadways that we're pushing
to the front of the list here tonight.
As Todd Howman mentioned, we reprioritized based
from that list you saw a couple weeks ago what proposition two
look like, same streets, same roadways, just reprioritized.
So what you'll see tonight is us work
through what we consider as staff highest priority projects
to the lowest priority projects on that proposition two.
Not to say that any one of those projects is not a high priority.
It's just how do you take top priority one, one, one, one, one and say well,
which of those has to fall in knowing that we can't even attack all the rest
of the high priority projects, these are just that high.
So our prime focus was what are safety improvements?
What are capacity improvements?
What addresses the mobility and the regional transportation network
that gets our citizens around internally and as well as they leave and go south
or east or north to wherever they go to work or live during the day.
So unlike what it didn't look like 20, 30 years ago and I had the advantage
of growing up here so I got to-- I've seen it and it's in all its forms so far.
But it used to be very much a bedroom community.
So you lived here, some folks worked here and a lot of folks traveled south to go work.
Now we're a destination, we're a place where people come to work
and our roads were not really set up for that volume of traffic
and we are suffering from that scenario today and now we're playing catch up.
So 2012, 2014 bonds, we absolutely started going down that pathway
but we've got to take the next step here.
And this pushes us down those next avenues, how do we address those capacity,
the volume scenarios, the mobility throughout the city and the town as well
as take care of those safety issues, make it a much safer community for folks
to travel whether it's bicycles, walking, motoring in a car,
whatever their preference is.
So as we go through, you're going to see us work through each
of these roadways based on those categories.
That's really what our focus was, was how does it address those scenarios.
Then it also addresses the thing that I know we've heard for quite a while here
and then those OCI streets, now low OCI streets.
So that overall condition index, it's really two components.
If you go to other cities, there's what they call a PCI,
it's a pavement condition index.
So how healthy is the road itself structurally?
So there's three basic components.
There's the sub grades, the dirt it's built on, how well it's compacted.
Then there's the base and that's basically the foundation.
So just like your house has a foundation, so does the road.
The road surface is only as good as the foundation is.
And then you've got the top, that's the part we see that we put all the paint
and everything else on top of and that's the surface course or as we call it,
that asphalt or you'll see us later, we'll throw out a big engineering term,
bituminous pavement, it's asphalt, it's all it is, just a big engineering term.
So those are the conditions we're evaluating these projects against
and trying very hard to figure out all of our needs.
So you're also going to hear us talk about lane miles.
You're going to hear us talk about segments.
So segments, and we talked about this a couple of weeks ago.
Segments really come down to one intersection to another intersection.
And if I've got it in our big database of streets and we have a huge database
of streets, that's the way we start breaking it down for the computer
to help us analyze how we're going to attack this effort.
How are we going to go forward with this?
We have over 4,300 segments of roadway, 4,300 segments of roadway
that we are working through.
All of them are in different conditions.
Some of them are very, very good.
We just built them.
Some of them are really, really bad and nobody's touched them in forever.
So you've got everything in between that we're also trying to attack.
And then when we talk lane miles, lane miles just means
if you can picture a four lane road, take McKinney right out the street here,
or right at the window here, there are four lanes there.
So one of the ways we try to quantify productivity for our streets crews
or our construction, whether it's laying pavement or it's going out
and doing striping or putting signs down, we talk about lane miles.
That just means I took that street and I said, well, there's four lanes here.
If I stack all four lanes together into one single lane for a mile,
that's what we're talking about.
So in the city of Denton, we're responsible for maintaining and operating
over 1,300 lane miles.
That's a lot of pavement.
So that's all the context, what we're working under,
as we try to prioritize what these projects would be.
So this just reiterates a slide that you have seen before.
But again, we reprioritize the projects.
So this was what you saw on May 30th.
It's what council saw in April, I think twice, maybe three times in work session.
So what you're seeing is that same slide.
We've just reprioritized those high priority streets, as we think of them,
because they do have the maximum amount of dollars
to leverage from other funding sources.
So Bonnie Bray phases five, six, and seven.
It carries us all the way out to loop 288 from scripture.
That's a long stretch of roadway that will be vital to the community,
not just when TechStat's working on it, but they are going to be working on I-35
for the next 10 to 15 years.
That road becomes a very important road for us.
It's our artery, our lifeline, when I-35 is under construction, north and south.
If you're trying to get to North Texas and Research Park,
or if you're trying to get to the high school, if you're just trying to get home
or to shopping or come all the way back down to North Texas main campus,
there's a whole host of things that are all along that one roadway.
And then it's also got to act as a bypass long over, at least for the next 10
to 15 years, when I-35 is under construction, it's also got to help divert
some of that traffic and keep it out of our neighborhoods,
but on a roadway designed to handle that traffic.
So Hickory Creek, big safety improvement.
It's also a regional connection.
That's one of the ways we're leveraging those dollars with our partners,
the Council of Governments, with the state, the county.
It connects 2499, and we are doing some of that work now from 2499 to 2181,
and then passed over to River Pass.
This fills the gap, takes us all the way to 35W, straight as an arrow,
over the floodplain, over the railroad tracks, get out to 35W.
A lot of your commuter traffic, whether they live here or they work here,
and they're trying to get south, what they do today is they congest Ryan 2181, 1830,
they go up Hobson, they go around Teasley, they take a variety of avenues.
And what are they trying to do?
They're trying to get to the interstate, either 35E or 35W,
and there's no good way to get there.
So one of the things that we'll talk about here soon is that Ryan's capacity
was downgraded quite a bit, not because it's not an important road,
but because Hickory Creek takes such a load off of the surrounding streets
when you go down this pathway.
And then the other streets, we've reprioritized the street rehab program
when we get into the local roads that we're talking about,
as well as Sidewalks, then Robinson, then Ryan,
and then we're talking Jim Crystal and FM 428.
And those are on there just as a placeholder to make sure we don't forget
what efforts are going on at both of those.
And then street lighting, if we have time for that,
that's also something that we might want to come back and revisit
more detail at a different time.
So one of the prime drivers for these top two projects,
and really four of the projects on this list, has been development.
And there are some areas of town that are growing faster than others,
but we actually have a map on this side.
So in the break, if you want to come and look at them,
this map right here shows what you're going to see in the next several slides,
but it's all of the development going on within the city of Denton.
So if it's green, that's a project that has gone to construction.
If it's orange, it's about to go to construction.
They're planning or they're working through the process
of visiting with folks on staff or their own design engineers.
They're talking to folks about what they're going to do with those projects.
And you can see by the numbers down there,
707 approved private development projects.
That's a lot of work going on.
This time last year, and there was a lot going on,
our public works inspection staff was trying to juggle 38 to 40 projects
on a daily basis that were private development related.
Today it's over 70 a day.
So we have a lot going on.
And the key that's so important there is it brings people,
it brings commuters, it brings business to the city of Denton.
It's folks that live here and they're now part of our community.
But it also means that the roadways are not big enough
to handle the amount of traffic that's coming and going throughout the community.
Private development does put in their fair share of the public infrastructure.
They do that as they come in.
But there are components of that that have to be done by the city
to close the gap for a variety of reasons.
So three of the most, or I guess the highest volume areas
where we're seeing development is in the south.
You're seeing a lot of infill, a lot of areas that were agricultural
in nature in the past and now they're coming in as residential neighborhoods.
Then you go up north, we're seeing the same thing.
So you go north of Loop 288, we're seeing a lot of folks.
If you've ever driven out, and I'm sure a lot of you have, you go out Sherman
or you go out Locust and what used to be mostly pasture or empty land,
homes are almost every step of the way.
Well, now they're going past the loop because all you see right now going
out to Loop 288 is construction.
It's just going to continue to go north.
You combine that with we have folks that live in Prosper and Sanger and Valley View
and a bunch of other cities that they come here to work.
They come here for medical services.
They come here for the entertainment, the recreation aspects.
It's a very different community than Denton was 30 years ago.
So these are our drivers for a significant number of these projects.
One of the other areas that's really hopping for us too is the area around the airport
and it's more of an industrial sector, but there is a lot of business coming here.
It generates a lot of traffic and in particular it generates a lot of heavy truck traffic.
So one of the concerns we have with a lot of these roadways is do you really want a lot
of heavy truck traffic driving through neighborhood streets or local arterial roadways?
Do we really want them where most of your commuters are going to be?
Or do you have them like we have?
We're lucky we're ideally situated to where the industrial sector is booming right off
of I-35.
But we still got to provide the connections so that they stay there and they don't start
wandering off the beaten path to find other ways to get where they need to go.
That's going to be really imperative again as the state continues to come through with
improvements to I-35 and that long term projection of how long they're going to be here.
So area one, this is just a blow up.
This was in your packet.
Now after these next couple of slides we're going to divert a little bit from what you
had seen on as far as Monday, as early as Monday.
So area one is just a blow up of that area and again you can see it here.
Area two, similar going to the north.
And this is a little misleading from the standpoint that we've had several discussions with folks
but nobody submitted anything yet that takes in a large chunk of this area right in here
for residential development.
So there's more coming.
We've just had preliminary conversations with those people.
We haven't seen anything tangible yet but we know it's coming.
And then area three, the industrial sector where we're seeing a lot of growth around
that area as well.
So as we go forward we're also going to talk about what these projects cost.
So when we talk about the cost of these projects we're not just talking construction dollars
because there's an overall cost to deliver any single one of these projects that includes
staff time, includes right away acquisitions, the design consultant potentially that might
be doing the work, the contractor.
Then we've got to factor in things like inflation over time.
So if we pass the bond in November but we can't actually go to construction until say
2022, three years into the bond, there's construction inflation built into this.
We don't want to be in a place where we were with 2012 and 2014 where all that was really
in the cost estimate was what it cost to build the project.
And then six years later we're trying to make up the difference.
So one of the things that's amazing in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, really we're considered
part of that area, if you look nationally construction inflation is growing between
three and five percent year over year.
So that's an annualized rate that compounds every year.
In Texas by and large you see the same rate overall.
But what's going on in Dallas and Fort Worth right now?
Eight to ten.
Easily because what's happening is, is TxDOT has invested billions upon billions of dollars
on the infrastructure here.
You've got development coming here in droves in the entire Metroplex area.
So contractors that just eight years ago, nine years ago coming out of the recession
who were very hungry and we were getting very good prices, they're not in that mode anymore.
They're much more in the mode of I've got more work than I can handle, it'd be nice
to get this job, but quite frankly I got more than I can handle.
So if I get it for this price, absolutely I'll take it.
Every now and then you get one that just says I want the job and I'll go for it.
We have a hard time filling street screws because contractors will come in and have
done.
They've walked onto a job site and said you guys are doing a bang up job, I'm going to
hire all six of you right now on the spot with benefits and a raise.
Construction historically, at least in Texas, is not going to generate benefits for an employee.
They do now.
That's how competitive a market is.
It's hard to get our contractors that we have worked historically with, they're having
a hard time getting people.
Our consulting engineers, our design professionals have a hard time getting people.
It is just that hot a market right now for people that's driving the cost up.
And the people they do get don't have very good skills, usually.
Could be.
From a previous experience, when you go through cycles like this, how long does it take the
supplier market to have people migrate into higher growth areas to equalize that labor
shortage?
That's a tough estimate to throw because we've not seen a market quite like this.
Even when the market was really booming coming out of the 90s and into the early 2000s, it
was not as dog eat dog as we're seeing right now when it comes to just cannibalizing people
and personnel.
You can't generate enough people coming out of school with any kind of want to go do something
on a professional basis, let alone folks who are willing to work an hourly wage on a job
that's very demanding physically.
When you can go get a similar wage or better and be air conditioned, there's a variety
of other benefits to that.
Nobody wants to work at 110 degrees heat next to a 165 degree asphalt hopper and that be
your job every day.
That's just, it's miserable.
It's a hard job and it's tough.
So you're definitely seeing this transition in the market right now.
My suspicion is that a lot of this is generated by the sheer influx of dollars that tech
stocks bring to the table to keep up with the demand.
So some of this is private development oriented.
Some of it is absolutely public works development generated.
The contractors you typically see on both sides of the fence stay in their vein typically.
Unless you go through a depression or a recession to where they're really hungry for work, they
might cross over the lines.
By and large, somebody who does public works projects sticks with public works projects.
Somebody who's a private developer contractor typically stays with private development.
You just have both markets going so hot and heavy.
What tech stock does with their general contractors, you'll see their general contractors come in
with these large projects, 20 billion, 30 billion, 35 billion, 45 billion dollar projects
and they'll get this very large consortium of a construction contractor.
That contractor wants to work the main lanes.
They want to be within tech stocks right away.
They don't want to deal with city of Denton on how many ramps we're going to have and
how much right away and the signals in the street.
They don't want to do that.
It's important to us.
That's not where they're making their money.
So what ends up happening invariably is that the subcontractors for them are our general
contractors.
They're our prime contractors typically.
So you have a lot of prime contractors doing subcontract work for tech stock and they're
busy.
They're flush with business.
There's all kinds of things to be doing.
So now not just us, but Lewisville, Firemount, Fort Worth, Dallas, Arlington, they're all
having the same problem.
If you're getting two, three, or four bidders on a project, when 10 years ago you would
have had 12 to 15 and you would have gotten 10 to 12 bidders on a project that was half
a million dollars less, now a good number of them won't even look at you unless it's
over a million dollars.
It's just the market we're in.
Now the bonus we have coming for us is tech stocks moving north.
They're going to be bringing the same guys with them north because that's where the gravy
train is right now.
They got experience with them.
That's where they got the experience making the money right now.
So the anticipation is they will come north, which should help to moderate our local competitiveness
going into the future.
Now we're still going to have to wait that out a little bit.
Tech stocks not really anticipating any of these projects in our area really going full
steam until you get into the 2024, 2026 time frame.
That's when they're here and not as focused in Dallas and Fort Worth.
So we got a little time before you start to see that really bubble over.
Does that answer your question?
Maybe more in depth than you wanted.
Well, would it be fair to say that you don't see much flexibility in the labor market?
It's more just wait until demand goes down?
Not for the foreseeable future, no, we just don't.
Okay.
So we're also building that inflation into these cost estimates as well as contingency.
So we build in a fairly high contingency upfront right now where we don't have a design consultant
or a professional design professional engaged in the project to find those major hurdles.
Do I have to deal with the United States Army Corps of Engineers and they're going to make
us go do jump through a lot of hoops, spend a lot of money on wetlands preservation, on
mitigation, on stream bank protection.
There's a variety of things that we'll get engaged in with all of these.
We don't know to what extent.
So there's a contingency built in that gets narrowed down as the project comes closer
to construction.
Right now we have factored in about 30% contingency since we just don't know the impact of those
efforts yet.
We have a general idea.
We know we're going to explore those.
We don't know to what depth yet.
And then the last component that we're building into every one of these budgets is incentives
and disincentives.
And that's a tool you use with the contractor to say we need to achieve the project in this
date, in this timeframe, and if you beat that, there's a little bonus here.
And I really want to pay you the bonus because then you're not out here for five years dragging
a project out that should have been done in a year and a half.
And then there's also the disincentive side, I can't offer the incentives without offering
the disincentive or I can't do the disincentives without offering the incentives, set it backwards.
So the disincentives is, okay, there's typically a limit on the incentives, $3,000 a day, $5,000
a day up to 30 or 45 days prior, or 30% of the contract, it just depends on the contract.
The disincentives has no limit.
It's the exact same amount, but it has no limit.
So it's a penalty to the contractor if you miss that date.
It doesn't mean we don't work with them on change, they can't control the weather, they
can't control certain things, it doesn't mean we don't work with them, but we build that
into these budgets so we're not having to come back to council on a later date and ask
for more money.
So that's built into all of these pretty thorough breakdown of what we do know now, and it will
whittle down as we get a design professional on board and you move forward into the design
process much closer to construction.
Any questions on this one?
Okay.
So the first of the projects, our top priority, and really we could have interchanged both
of these two top priorities, Bonnie Bray and Hickory Creek, if you just have to pick one,
it's almost throw a dart at it and pick the one it lands on because they're that critical
in our view.
They also generate the maximum amount of leverage.
So for this project, we're anticipating the 27 million dollars is all we're putting into
the project, but we're leveraging almost 112 million dollars.
That comes from our partners with the council of governments, with the state, with the county,
the school district.
There's a variety of partners that help us make that a reality and in all the discussions
we're having right now, which will get more formalized as this process moves along, everyone's
very interested in being a part of this.
We already have some of that money committed.
We're working to get the rest of that committed.
So what we've also presented here is just what this looks like.
So the project, Bonnie Bray itself has seven phases.
That's why there's five, six, and seven here.
The other four phases are funded and they're either under construction, going to construction
in the next six to nine months, or about to be complete.
So Bonnie Bray phase one, way south, is almost complete and almost just meaning everything's
in place, but we've got two gas lines there that got to be moved and we're ready to go.
This focuses on that northern end.
It goes from McKenna Park to the south.
This is phase five and goes up to University Drive.
Then from University Drive, it goes all the way to 77.
In the 2014 bond, Bonnie Bray was identified as a project from University Drive to Windsor
and that's where it stopped.
The reason this project became eligible for some of our partners to really want to partner
with us is University Drive is a state roadway and 77 and Loop 288 are state facilities.
When we made the connection to 77 and then ultimately Loop 288, that became of interest
to our regional partners to want to put some money into this project and make it a reality.
You combine that with the school district having a high school that's wanting to move
up here to the north, I'm still going to have to get used to my alma mater being on the
north side of town and not in the middle.
So it's going to be up here on the north side of town that's going to generate a lot more
traffic up here than what we've seen in years.
University Park absolutely changed that dynamic.
So I did the growth in the parks there at McKenna and North Lakes Park and now you're
going to add on top of that a high school with all its activities and everything that
goes on year round.
We're in a race to get there before they open.
So with that being said, council did approve design dollars for this road and that's one
of the other prime reasons why our regional partners are very interested in partnering
with us is we're well into the design process.
I believe we're past 30%, almost into the 40% of the design process so we've answered
the vast majority of what hurdles are in front of that project and we're moving into the
full design of that project.
All those technical issues are being resolved.
The state has also come in and committed to this purple piece here.
Really the city's commitment going forward would be working with the University of North
Texas to acquire the right-of-way, but the state is going to fund the piece from 77 to
Loop 288 and we'll go over Loop 288.
So it's cutting across the west edge of Discovery Park.
Yes.
So that park is, UNT actually owns this whole triangle and we're coming just inside of it.
So Bonnie Bray, how many new Bonnie Bray goes under Loop 288?
To be honest, and I've lived here a long time, I don't because I always go over it on Loop
288 or I go sideways and never really pay attention to it going under Loop 288, which
is in a flood-prone area.
So this new alignment would take it up and over Loop 288 and the state has stepped in
and said they will do the design and construction of that portion.
The other point I would make is all along 77, that is rapidly filling in with apartments,
homes.
It's going to have a pretty high density all the way up to Loop 288.
So currently today, you'll see this term on most of our slides here when it comes to these
types of projects like the Bonnie Bray and the Hickory Creek, you'll see a level of service,
peak hour level of service.
So today, if you were to drive Bonnie Bray, peak hour just means the morning when everybody's
commuting or dropping off kids at school and in the evenings when everybody's coming home
or whatever they're doing, you've got those rush hour times.
We call it, engineers, we call that the peak hour because it's when we see the maximum
amount of traffic through a one hour time slot, that's what we design most roadways
for.
So throughout this corridor, you see level of service D and it's graded from an A to
an F just like when you're in school, roadways and intersections get graded on a scale of
an A being the best to an F being the worst, meaning you basically can't get through it.
It's basically a parking lot or it's so rough, you basically have to be in a four by four
to make sure you can get out without damaging the vehicle.
So there's a variety of reasons why it might fall into that F category.
Most of the time it's a capacity reason, how many cars are going through.
That relates back to congestion.
How likely are people to stop at an intersection and wait?
What ends up happening when you're next to a residential subdivision if they're on a
major roadway and they're waiting, they cut through the neighborhood and that's exactly
what we don't want to have happen.
We want our neighborhoods to be a safe place.
We don't want vehicular traffic moving through like they do today.
They do that a lot of times today because there's nowhere else to go.
They're stuck in a light.
University and Bonnie Bray is a nightmare at certain times of the day.
It operates at a little bit less than a level of service D right now, almost into a level
of service E and what this would do with this project is it would push it into an A for
most of the day, but in those rush hour times, it pushed it into a B. Long-term, and we do
these projections out into 2045 based on the Council of Government's regional model for
growth.
That's all we have to work off of right now, and then we also compare that with the development
services and planning model for planning with different zoning districts and the ultimate
makeup of the entire city looks like from a development standpoint.
How does that grow into volumes and capacities of cars moving down the roadway, people walking,
people cycling?
How do you grow these roadways so that I build today for what I know is coming in the short
very near future?
Todd, do we have the right of way already from Scripture to 380?
Not all of it, no.
We're working on that piece, but not all of it.
It's with any project, there's always going to be right of way that needs to be acquired.
There are easements that need to be acquired.
Some of those easements are just temporary in nature because I've got to have 10 foot
for the construction guy to be over that side of the property line while he's doing work
on this side, and then we return it back to natural afterwards and that easement goes
away.
So there's a whole variety of those easements that we've also got to build into these schedules.
Todd, at a high level, you mentioned earlier that I-35 is going to see significant changes
or construction.
Yes.
At a high level, can you share what those are?
They're still developing a fair amount of those plans, and I know Preetam can talk to
quite a bit of those, but one of the significant changes you'll see in this area is the ramps
that enter onto I-35 and exit.
A prominent condition that's going to change is today we just have a ramp that dumps off
and a ramp that gets back on.
At University Drive in particular on I-35, that's a problem.
The ramps are very close to the intersection.
There's a lot of people trying to get off, and you have people trying to get off going
into their neighborhoods up here.
Some people trying to go get dinner at Cheddar's or wherever they're going.
I like Cheddar's.
It's probably going to come to mind.
But there's a variety of things going on in this area that is generating that traffic.
So what TxDOT will be doing with that project is they're going to build what they call braided
ramps.
So if you can imagine, if you've driven Dallas and Fort Worth at all, some ramps exit off
the highway high, and some ramps come on underneath it, and it's a mishmash when you're looking
at it.
You're like, how in the world did they come up with this spaghetti noodle of a solution?
But it works.
And it's for these reasons that they do those braided ramps that the distances are so tight
that you try to get enough room away from the intersection that people can safely exit,
and you don't have that parking lot like we have on I-35 going north of the Y and onto
the University Drive exit.
So that goes away, plus they're looking to add additional ramps.
They work with the city didn't in this case, but all communities.
If there are major intersections, and they can incorporate into the project, they have
the same problems we do, they've got to be able to fund it.
Are there some alternate locations?
One of the ones that we have talked about with TxDOT and we're still working through
would be an exit ramp at Windsor, because a lot of the people that are leaving the highway
getting on University Drive trying to get to their homes.
If I have an exit just beyond that, well, now they can get directly to their homes and
not fight the traffic that's also trying to get to University Drive for wherever they're
going.
So those are all going on in the background as we're talking about this.
Todd, when I looked at the cost of this project, just looking at cost per lane mile, just isolating
design and construction, not right away, none of the other columns in the later summary.
This one came out around $5 million per lane mile, and all the other arterial projects
came out at like $2.5 million ish.
Can you speak to what is driving that difference?
There are several things that are driving it.
Some of it's right away assumptions, because there are right away costs that get tied into
this and part of that right away cost.
Sorry to interrupt, that was just the design and construction columns, not the right away
column.
I'd have to go back and look.
I couldn't tell you right off the top of my head, because it's an all-inclusive cost.
There's utilities, there's a variety of other things that get tied in that may not be true
in other locations.
For instance, there is a major water line that has to go in with this project.
So a large water line and a booster pump station tied to it's going to inflate the number in
a different way.
Crossings at different elevations, if we have to do a significant amount of fill, raising
and lowering, that may change it as well.
So you're going to see that in some of these projects.
But every project is just take it six inches down, put pavement on top.
Yeah, and I've been to minor variations, it was just a 2X difference.
Oh, and it has two bridges as well, so it throws some of those numbers off as well.
Yeah, I mean, that's fine, I mean, Hickory Creek has a really big bridge too.
You've also got the scenario where we're going up and over the interstate, the Luke 288 right
there.
It's a whole different set of construction than what you're talking about with Hickory
Creek.
It's still a bridge, but it's a full interchange with an interstate highway.
They're projected volumes when they actually tie in 380 and swing 380 up to Luke 288 and
comes around the outside of town combined with the outer loop traffic.
I mean, there's some other factors there that are pushing that number in a different direction.
But again, it's the most leveraged project we've had.
Yes?
I have a question.
Yes, sir?
I just want to ask, the bikeway is already four lanes, so how are you going to say that
you're going to expand it to four lanes and increase your LOS from a D to an A?
There's a lot of improvements that go on at the intersections, which is really what unlocks
the roadway.
So there's a widening to almost six lanes with bypass, there's a variety of things that
happen at the intersections.
They get wider, they get bigger to handle the amount of traffic.
Anytime I put a signal up, I'm essentially creating a parking lot.
So I got a couple of options for that parking lot.
I may get wider so I can stack the cars even further up or I can make it narrower, but
try to find some way of providing extra avenues for people to get off of that roadway.
Is this supposed to be a six lane road eventually?
It's being built that way.
Yes, it'll have a wide median so that at some point in the future when we do need six lanes,
you can add the six lanes to the inside and we're not getting right away another day.
So it'll be about as wide as Mayo is right now?
Yes.
Yes, ma'am.
Does the budget help with the state funds and I guess the city funds for, what is it
called, Buc-E's?
I know that's 288 areas for the ramp.
I noticed that you guys didn't do the ramp until after they got here.
Part of what you're seeing right now is a different staff than what was here when Buc-E's
and the ramps for I-35E.
That staff is a different staff.
So there's a lot more proactivity going on now to make those things happen.
Oh, if you want to.
So there were things that happened after the construction.
So Buc-E's came in after I-35 had been in the planning stages.
I-35 has been in the planning stages for well over a decade.
I mean, it's pushing 20 years in the planning phases, then the design process.
Their processes that they're state and federally mandated to follow takes longer than what
we can do.
We can do some things faster because it just takes that long for them to get there.
And if you can imagine expanding a multiple billion dollar roadway, it just takes a lot
of planning, a lot of moving of things, a lot of getting things out of the way.
So TxDOT had been planning that roadway way in advance of Buc-E's ever deciding they wanted
to come put a Buc-E's here in Netton.
So after that had already gone, been let, ready to go to construction, then Buc-E's
came in and they started working with the state, trying to find a way to make it happen.
Buc-E's started working with the state?
No, Buc-E's the city.
You had a variety of players that were involved in that.
Okay.
Because that's a crazy area right now.
It is a crazy area.
And that's why you're seeing the solutions go in there now.
Staff worked very hard on several traffic studies to help prove to the state that some
of the connections you're seeing come online now were warranted.
I think the Brinker Road connection is the primary one we're talking about.
Brinker really had no forward momentum until Pre-Tem really let the charge to go forward
to do a traffic study in the area and prove to the state that that was needed.
I'm sure that's a high dollar above all, like, you know, the expense and yeah.
Are you guys trying to get HOV lanes here or no?
I don't believe that was part of their, anywhere in their scope of work.
And that's also been a challenge with the state from the top, from the governor's position.
It's been a little bit of a change in the thought process.
So we have no control over that part.
That would help too.
Okay.
Any other questions on Bonnie Brady?
Just real quickly, does all of this include like an improvement on the bike lanes or?
Yes.
Okay.
So you'll see in this little schematic down here, we're playing for bike lanes, we're
playing for sidewalks, side paths.
The buildings, I have no idea what they're actually going to look like.
So Pre-Tam had a lot of fun playing with it, so we don't know exactly what's going to be
there.
But there will be street lights, there will be sidewalks, there will be bicycle lanes.
I mean, obviously we're designing so that all modes of transportation can get to the
high school, to North Texas, to the residential homes, to the park, all the way down to Razor
Ranch and all the amenities that are down that way.
These primary, these arterial roadways, yes, they all include street lights.
Okay.
So that will be in Bonnie Brady, that's in Hickory Creek, Robinson, Ryan Road.
So all the new ones there?
Yes.
DME just did a major improvement to the transmission lines along Bonnie Brady.
Yes.
Will those be impacted by this?
Not many of them.
It was planned for them to be set outside.
There might be a few because development has changed the nature.
When DME came in, they put their poles where they thought they were going to have to be
and of course now, new developers, new development, they want to put a driveway where they want
to put it and that's a negotiation constantly that we're working with them on.
Do you make them move the street light?
Developer or DME or who?
No, do you make the developer move the street light?
If they're impacting it, yes ma'am.
Tom, is there any chance that these bike lanes could get raised up above the roadways so
that we're not all sharing the same level?
Absolutely.
What you're saying right now is a concept.
It is by no means the final design.
This is just a concept to give you an idea of what the feel of the road might be but
as far as the location of where the bicycles would be in relation to the road, one of the
avenues that we are working through right now and we're working with DME on right now
is where would say a side path like a bicycle path and a pedestrian path be off the roadway
that wind down the right-of-way, that's one of the options we're considering right now.
Good.
Any questions over here, Tom?
Yes ma'am.
Tom, do you know the volume of traffic car-wise is anticipated going up and down without a
break?
Yes, and that's why pre-tamp is sitting right up front.
I think it's currently in the 11 to 15 hour range but once this is done with the school
coming in, it will go beyond 22,000 to 25,000 vehicles per day.
Vehicles.
I don't know if you all heard that pre-tamp was saying that right now we're seeing 11
to 12,000 vehicles per day on the existing roadway and where this would take us would
be the capacity for 22,000 to 25,000 vehicles per day.
One of the other things we didn't talk about and I think Mr. Pruitt brought it up, or somebody
brought it up, it's four lane now and you're going to do four lane.
It's four lanes now but what happens with a four lane divided roadway, and we'll dive
into this a little bit with Ryan Road as well, when you have four lanes and people are trying
to turn left, what happens is people stop in the left lane so everybody's forced to
go around them, and now they're waiting to turn left, and that happens in both lanes,
especially if I have a neighborhood here and a neighborhood here or whatever they're trying
to get to.
So what we have found over time is essentially those four lane roadways, unless there's nothing
that is a destination for the driver to want to turn left, those four lane roadways really
function like a three lane roadway or one in each direction with a center turn lane.
So that's really how most four lanes work, with just a little bit more capacity to them.
When you go down the pathway of what we're proposing here, it's a four lane road with
a median, so you control where people actually turn left, and then you give them the side
bays, those left turn bays to stack in that lane, and then you still allow two lanes of
traffic to move through.
Any other questions, most anticipated time, construction to completion?
So for phase six, that would be our first target because of the high school.
Phase six would be the first one to go into construction.
We need to have that open by beginning of school of 2022, they actually would like it
open by the end of the spring of 2022, so they can have some of their summer camps and
other things going on.
So it's a very aggressive schedule, that's why we're already in the design process and
working with property owners on where the right-of-way asks would be and where the easements
would come from.
Because I live right off Bonnie Bray.
Yes, ma'am.
This is why I'm asking.
Sure.
How am I going to be able to turn right or left as I come off, well not scripture because
we'll have a roundabout, but it's a personal question, how am I going to get out of there?
I understand and you will see us as we go through these projects, provided these are
projects going forward, we will have multiple public meetings and early and upfront in that
public meeting, we want that feedback, what are the impacts you perceive so that you can
see the evolution of the design of that project.
You're not going to be totally inconvenienced, we will do our best to try to provide ways
for people to get around, but we'll do our best to work together so you know what's coming,
when it's coming, and where there are concerns, try our best to incorporate that into the
project.
Sorry, one more thing.
One of the things just in general that I'd like to understand is how many people are currently
impacted by lower levels of service and what that impact is in a number of minutes.
So I know you had 10 to 12k people or 15 per day, I don't know how much of that breaks
down within the peak hour where that level of service is really reduced and that sort
of thing.
It may be beyond the scope of right now, but in general I would like to see that.
I would say that would be something we could bring back at another time.
I could not even begin to get into that.
We have information when it relates to some of these projects, especially those that are
in design, but we're going to really get into the weeds on some of this where I don't know
that it's going to have a bearing tonight and I definitely couldn't give you good answers
right this second.
Understood, thank you.
I have one question.
Yes ma'am.
I'm glad that somebody raised the question about having the bikes and you guys raising
the roads for the bikes.
Are you guys leading in that with other cities with that idea or is it already out there?
Have you seen other cities with the bike race?
Every city has a slightly different take on where they want that to go.
There are places where they like to have them on the street.
There's definitely been a push in the transportation community here of late where I really don't
want the bicycles to be worried about fighting a 6,000 pound vehicle coming up right behind
them or right next to them.
If I try to separate that, pull them off the roadway, you still by state law can travel
in that lane if you're a cyclist.
You have that right.
You're a vehicle like anybody else.
Bicycle lanes provide a facility to where you don't have the two right on top of each
other, but what we'd like even better is for that to be separate to have some safe distance
between the two and the cyclist feel like they have more independence on where they're
going to be.
The trade off is that's a lot more right of way.
It's a lot more space that you got to have to make all those things happen.
There's definitely multiple schools of thought and it takes a lot of what I would term a
complete streets philosophy, which is what our staff has when it comes to planning transportation
projects.
I'm not looking at just how I get a car from A to B. I'm looking at how I get people who
are walking for a variety of reasons, how I get bicyclists there, how do I get the motorists
there, how do I get public transportation there, how do I make sure EMS can get through.
There's a whole host of things we're trying to balance all at one time.
When you design the roadway, you also got to start taking into account what is the context.
Am I near a residential neighborhood, am I a commercial district, am I near schools,
where am I?
All those things come into play when we're designing.
It's definitely not done in a vacuum.
When you do a roadway like Bonnie Bray, it goes from rural and the extreme southern end
and the extreme northern end and it goes into school zones, it goes into university traffic,
it goes into a medical district, it goes into a whole variety of settings that now we're
challenged with working through.
We're doing our best to do that as we bring these options forward.
I just think it would be an innovative way for you guys to stand out among other cities
and that people would want to definitely move here just because of the bikes.
A lot of people like that lifestyle of being able to just ride their bike and not be congested
with the traffic.
If you guys are doing that, that's going to bring a lot of people to Denton, especially
students for UNT.
We're pushing seven o'clock and we have not gotten through the first project.
I am more than happy to answer your questions, but we're going to be here a long time.
All right.
Bonnie Bray, let's move on.
Hickory Creek Road, we talked about this one a little bit.
It's been in the papers here of late.
The road has just had an increased number of ... The fatalities have made the paper
for sure, but the traffic has gone up significantly.
What used to be a small country road is now handling commuter traffic that's trying to
get to South, trying to get to school, trying to get to Guyer High School.
They're trying to get to their jobs in Dallas, Fort Worth, or South Lake, or they're trying
to come here for a variety of reasons, whether it's to work or it's to play, whatever they're
doing.
The roadway has taken on a whole new character and it's never been able to catch up.
Residential development has taken off in this entire southern segment.
You also have potential residential development coming in on the other side.
It's just a matter of time before that fills in as well, catches up with ropes and ranch
way out on the extreme.
The roadway today, we have the yellow piece and the green piece.
That's between 2499 and 2181 and then over to River Pass.
Those are under construction.
This yellow piece will be under construction later this year.
Its design is 95% complete.
By that we mean we know exactly what we're going to be putting out there.
We're just closing the gap on some fine details to get it out to bid.
The green piece is under construction.
We are working through that segment now.
Then everything you see in blue and red, that's what we're planning today.
We have design dollars that are already being put into the ultimate alignment of this entire
red segment.
What we have today will carry us into 30% design of the entire length of this roadway.
That also is what has given us the open door with our regional partners, Council, Government,
County, to leverage the $34 million, $35 million we're asking to put into it to $160 million.
This becomes a very important connection, not just for Denton, and it's extremely important
for us from a safety reason for just getting people around on the south part of town, but
there are other needs throughout the entire region that are met by this roadway.
It takes some load off of an argyle who's seeing an increased amount of traffic because
we have folks trying to get out to I-35W.
There are a variety of reasons why this becomes a very important part of leveraging those
dollars significantly.
The project we're working on in total is 30% design all the way to I-35W.
The dollars we were working with COG and several other resources this summer to nail down would
carry us construction for the ultimate alignment all the way to 35W.
What you're also seeing is partnerships coming to fruition with private development in this
corridor, and that's because we have the planning already going.
We're already working on the design, and as development comes in, they're picking
up that piece and doing their share.
They're building their half of that roadway.
There are several of those developments that we're talking to today that are ready to go
to construction as soon as they can get their plans together, and we're nailing down what
does that alignment look like for them.
That's an unknown quantity for them that's not resolved.
We're a lot more willing to come help with that.
We also are looking to build this initial piece.
This is the piece that gets us over to 1830.
It straightens out Hickory Creek Road, which has the big sweeping curve that has caused
fatalities, has had multiple accidents.
This would go straight over the floodplain.
It would also go over the railroad tracks, so you don't have that conflict point either.
We're going to go over both and then touch down back over at 1830.
We are in conversation, matter of fact, we had a meeting this week with TechStot about
1830, and what does this intersection look like going forward.
All of those things are in the works.
When you see this level of service D down here, what we're talking about is if you left
the roadway alone today, because it's not level of service D right now, it's not that
kind of traffic, but with all these developments coming online, when they come in, it will
be, by the time you start pushing out into 2025 and into 2030, 2035, it will be.
In some places, it will be a level of service F. You do have some places that are level
of service D today with traffic.
Hickory Creek Road now, and where it ties in to 1830, it's a very dangerous intersection
because it's sharp turns right next to the creek, can hardly see what's coming and going
around you.
It operates very much at a level of service D right now.
This roadway would push us into a level of service A with six lanes of roadway going
all the way to 35W, so it's going to move a lot of traffic.
Here's what has changed, and this is what comes to bear with the remainder of the project,
especially when we get into the remainder of these projects, when we talk about Ryan
Road and the streets, neighborhood streets, things like that.
We did a complete area study.
We did a traffic study of the entire area from Hobson Road down south to Crawford Road
all the way past I-35W just a little bit, and over to 2181, 2499, so that we would start
to have an idea of as development comes in, as we see the growth, what does the entire
roadway network do?
Where do people go?
They're going to find the path of least resistance, and then we use a series of models that allows
us to figure out projected, I mean, it's still an estimate, but it's a very good educated
estimate of what's going to happen.
Where's traffic going to go?
By unlocking the southern segment, where most people are trying to get over to 35W, 35E,
2499 to go south, you unlock it by putting Hickory Creek Road in.
When it's four lanes, six lanes wide, people are not trying to go north to ultimately go
south.
They stay on Hickory Creek Road, and they go east and west.
So this is the entire red segment?
Yes, ma'am.
The study actually goes all the way over to where the end of the yellow is.
So it's planning for future growth out into 2045 as well.
So what that does is it relieves a lot of the stress that a Ryan Road feels today.
So when we run through those scenarios in this model, Ryan is a two-lane roadway.
At worst, it becomes a three-lane roadway off in the future.
It's a collector.
It's a neighborhood street collector to get people to the school, to get them over to
the larger roads, the 2181, the 1830.
So TechStat's also looking to do four lanes divided along 1830.
That's the conversation we had earlier this week.
So now you've got two four-lane roadways on both sides of Hickory Creek and Ryan Road.
People go down to Hickory Creek and then out to where they want to go.
The strain that Ryan Road feels today really only during the peak hours, because most of
the time you drive Ryan, there's not that many people on it.
But when people are dropping off kids at school, it backs up significantly when people are
trying to get to work or come home from work, it does back up at the intersections.
And there's a new development, right?
There are a lot of new developments.
Yes, ma'am.
Ryan Road, yes.
Yes.
Right on the other side.
Yeah, you can.
You can actually see it over here.
So there's Ryan Road that sits right there.
And that green spot.
It is.
Right.
It's developed.
Are we still planning to do a park in the future along 377, just to the north of that?
Yes.
So that park is this square you see right here.
And that's part of the discussion that we're having with the development that is coming
in this area is how it connects to the park.
How do we connect the park and the trail system to the overall roadway network?
We're working with the Parks Department to make sure that that's not neglected.
It absolutely is a part of the overall plan.
How do you get all modes of transportation throughout the network?
There's a fire station on that map right there.
It is.
It is just up here.
That's it right there.
That dot.
That's Vintage Boulevard right there.
Right.
Are there any projects in play to build up southeast end?
Where in particular?
I'm going to say off of Robertson, McKinney, in between those areas.
Robertson and McKinney, that really we're targeting with more of the neighborhood streets,
the local streets program, and we'll get into that here in a minute.
That's one of the areas that we have proposed to go into this bond program.
Okay.
So in general, that's the project we have for Hickory Creek Road.
Again, it's one of those that we're leveraging the most amount of dollars.
So we put the city's contribution to work in the biggest way.
Yes, ma'am.
So in the green segment, there's an elementary school.
Yes.
How is that being considered in the whole overall plan because that's going to be a
major thoroughfare?
So that's actually getting a signal at that intersection.
That's part of the current project going into construction today.
Boy, that goes through and I can get you pop a Murphy's like that.
Any other questions on this?
Just real quick.
Yes, ma'am.
Is there, will we be able to receive a breakout of where the funding is coming from?
Yes, that's a little bit later in the presentation.
It's more projected, but those conversations are happening.
While we don't have the dollars totally committed yet, it's conversations where everybody's
very interested.
Now, the money we're asking for here would build half of that roadway you see in blue.
It would get the bridges in place, it would build the road.
Unless you still have a complete roadway when these dollars are approved, you'd still have
a project that's a workable project, it would just be more of us relying on development
to come in the future to help build the rest of the roadway.
So with Bonnie Bray, we're just widening it for now, but we'll have space to expand to
possibly six lanes later.
Yes.
Here, we're going straight up to six.
Is there a specific reason that we didn't do four lanes?
That's an option we have presented to council.
The direction we got from council was for the marginal increase in cost, why not go
ahead and put the six lanes in today and just be ready for what's coming?
What's the design speed?
Design speed?
I don't have that in front of me right now.
Most likely.
How about we take a 10-minute break?
I think that'd be great, because the next one coming up is probably going to take all
of an hour.
Okay.
All right.
So let's adjourn or let's reconvene at 714, and we're back.
All right.
So closing up the discussions of Hickory and Bonnie Bray, we're going to move on to local
streets.
Go ahead, Priti.
Which is definitely the part we look forward to the most tonight, is talking about local
streets.
So on the top, there's two maps on the far left over there, my left and your right.
That map on the far left, your far right, my far left, is the same map you're seeing
up here on the screen.
What that map shows are all of the roadway segments that are city-owned roadway segments
within the city and their OCI, their overall condition index.
So we rank each score based on a grade, 0 to 100, just like in school.
That score tells us basically the health of the road.
There are really two components to that score.
If it were just the pavement and how good a condition the pavement was in, it would
be a PCI, a pavement condition index.
This is an OCI, and what makes it an OCI, overall condition index, is that we're looking
at the ride quality of the road.
What that really means is, is it smooth?
Does it pass a certain test of how smooth that road is?
Why is that important?
It's important because it adds additional stress to the road.
So if you can imagine, if there's something sticking up in front of you when you're walking
and you stub your toe, you've done two things, right?
It's hurt you, and then whatever you've hit, it either moves or it falls away, or maybe
it doesn't if it's really that hard and you just didn't see it, but there's some damage
done to that.
So your kid leaves a toy out there or a variety of other things and might drop something away.
You kick it with your foot, it hurts you like it would a car when it's driving down the
roadway.
It takes more punishment throughout its drive if those conditions are not met, like potholes,
right?
Everybody's driven over those and you feel that one.
But the road takes a beating.
Now, not to the extreme as a pothole, when your tire goes into a pothole, it hits the
other side of the pothole and it can cause it to fracture more, which then allows other
things to happen.
But just being rough, so a piece of the roadway, say we build a concrete roadway and we don't
finish it appropriately, it's got some humps or some things in it, then your tire hits
that over time.
It does other things to the pavement that causes what we would call additional stress,
and it causes the road to break down a little faster.
So the smoother the roadway, the better the ride quality, the better the score, the better
life we expect to get out of that roadway.
Just like if you're walking and running down a really rough pavement, you feel it in your
legs and your knees.
If it's a nice smooth roadway or a nice smooth beach, then you don't feel it as hard on your
own body parts.
Cars are the same way, roads are the same way.
They have that same kind of condition.
Every five years or four to six years depends on where it falls in the budget schedule.
We have this nice truck that comes through by a company, IMS.
They drive throughout the city and they assess the condition, the overall health of the roadway,
the entire roadway network.
They also pick up a few other things that we get.
We don't do that just yet, but we will be in the next round.
We didn't last time.
The last time we assessed our pavement was in 2015.
As you can imagine, over time, roads have degraded from what their score was almost
five years ago, four years ago for sure.
The way we deal with that instead of spending $150,000 to $200,000 every year to have the
roadway reassessed, and it takes them three months to do that, so then how viable are
your results, is we also rely on some computer modeling that is tied into GIS, or geographic
information software, and it allows us to build in how's that roadway going to break
down over time, what we would expect.
If it already has a really low grade, if it's 25 or lower, then you would expect it to be
on the extreme lower health end, and any more damage that it gets over that next four or
five years, it's just going to get worse.
On the other side, very extreme high end, something that's really healthy, it can take
a lot more punishment before you have to do something to it, give it a rest, or let it
rehabilitate in some way.
Roadways do the exact same thing.
We use this assessment to double check where our roadways are, and we do that every five
years.
We have the next one coming up this next fiscal year, so you will see this truck driving around,
maybe two or three of them driving around town to collect that data.
So the pavement life cycle, so we just talked about that software that in 2015, all the
roadways that we had an assessment for, what was its actual health grade in the field,
what we've done since then is we do visual inspections, or when we go do construction,
we actually go and test it.
We drill holes in it to see what's actually under there, and we get a better idea of what
to build in its place.
Most pavements, so you notice there's no timeline here, that's because pavements come in different
varieties, right?
So there's concrete and asphalt are the two primary versions of a roadway you see.
They typically have a similar life cycle pattern.
So when they're brand new, they get a score of 100, they're in excellent condition.
They perform really well, but just like anything, over time as you drive more cars over it,
as it's exposed to the weather, things settle underneath it, that road starts to degrade.
So over 40% of its pavement life, you're going to see a small degradation.
It's going to move into this very good range, on that 85 range, 80 to 85.
Still a good road, but we need to do some minor maintenance to it, and I can push that
back up closer to 100.
I'm not going to get back to perfect.
That's just almost impossible to always get, but I'll get close.
That prolongs the life of the pavement the earlier I catch it.
So to give you an idea, asphalt, we expect typically to last 20 to 25 years if I don't
do anything to it.
Now 20 to 25 years means that at 40% of its life, by the time I hit eight years, I need
to do something to it, or I'm going to fall into this range here, where I go very quickly
from very good to poor.
And then if I neglect it even further, I move further down that curve to where I'm in that
very poor range.
And that's where we get into these OCI scores of 30 and less.
There are those roadways that have the big potholes.
You start to see whole sections seem to have big ruts and grooves in it, and that's where
the foundation has failed for a variety of reasons.
There are a whole host of things that can happen to the pavement, and if we don't stay
on top of it, then you start to see things like we've seen historically.
Now what you have seen is City of Denton has been very good over the last six years, eight
years of really investing in a maintenance program.
So these bond projects, these debt-funded shots in the arm, so to speak, allows us to
take those really bad streets and push them back up into a high category so that I can
then do heavy maintenance to it.
We can put them under a real robust maintenance program like we're operating today, so those
roadways will last longer.
I'll give you an idea of what we're talking about.
So this lovely chart here, I'm sure it was an engineer who put it together, because it
makes all the sense in the world to me, and I will attempt to interpret as much as I can.
So the blue line you see here, we're grading now one segment of roadway, some fictional
roadway, a lane of it, that lasts over, we're just looking at a 50-year snapshot, okay,
50 years of an asphalt roadway.
Concrete is similar.
It's just a little bit longer lifespan.
We expect concrete to last 30 to 40 years.
So if I do, and this is what I warned you earlier, we'd see some of these engineering
terms, BST, so if that's bituminous or asphalt, surface treatment, that's a very technical
term that makes it sound like we actually went to college and know what we're talking
about.
What it really means is I'm basically changing the oil in the car, okay?
These are the things that are fairly low cost, very quick, that I can turn around a roadway
in a day or less.
You may have seen one of these trucks that run through town, Intermountain Slurry Seals,
our current contractor, you'll see it on the sides of the truck.
He drives down the street and everybody calls in and says, "Hey, why are you shutting our
road down?
You just were out here five years ago."
Then the next time they go outside, they're already gone.
That's a surface treatment.
That's designed to prolong the life of that roadway.
What we had done five years ago had taken us months to reconstruct from the foundation
all the way back up.
I've now given it new life for another five or six years before I got to do it again that
will potentially allow that roadway to last 40 years or 50 years in the future, as long
as I keep it under that continuous maintenance program.
Is that basically the oil on the rocks, like they do on the highways where they just pour
oil?
That's chip seal.
No, that's chip seal.
That's different.
I hate that, but yeah.
No, that's chip seal.
I hate that too, but yes, that's chip seal.
What you will see is if you have a very robust maintenance program, and we do, we have one
that has been in place.
Now, there are a variety of reasons why we haven't made as much progress.
It's a long history of roadways that have just needed to be redone.
When you start putting a maintenance program together, you're going to have to give it
some shots in the arm to get these really poor streets up into that upper range where
the maintenance program can run it.
Let's take our fictional street, if I were to put, say, $9,000 one year, five or six
years later, I put another $9,000 into it, and then I give it what we call an overlay.
What that really means is I'm just going to put a little bit of asphalt on top.
I might even mill an overlay, which means I'll shave a couple of inches off and add
two more inches of asphalt on top.
I've basically given that road another massive shot in the arm.
That's why you see it shoot up a little higher.
Those are different gradations or different levels of maintenance.
It's not just an oil change.
Now I'm rotating the tires and changing the oil all at the same time.
Those things are occurring in the same 25-year span where if I just let that road go, I might
have to spend $300,000 on it.
I've spent a third of that cost.
You project that over 50 years, it just compounds on top of itself.
That's what the two programs are trying to do.
You've got roadways that are still falling into the poor condition.
You're never going to have a roadway like this chart seems to imply that you can have
a road that lasts for thousands of years.
That will not happen.
It might still be in existence like the roads are, but would you really want to drive it?
I guarantee if you drove those roads today, there wouldn't be a road behind it when you
drove over it.
There just wouldn't be.
They do have a lifespan ultimately, but we can prolong their life and minimize the cost,
marginalize the cost to our residents and our businesses by putting it down to a really
robust program that's not debt funded.
That's our operations and maintenance budget.
That's what we do every year to keep those roadways in a very healthy condition.
Then I get to these roadways that they just need the help.
That's what this program is seeking to do.
Give another shot in the arm to these roadways that need to be brought back up to where I
can maintain them over the long-term.
We have ... Somebody asked for a histogram.
We have a histogram today.
That is what this is right here, but it's a very good suggestion and it's a good way
to break this out.
I'm glad it was brought up, and me as an engineer, I love them.
What you have are the different gradations we just talked about and a description of
what they really mean.
For an asphalt street, you're going to have a 25-year lifespan.
I can change those years that I expect to do these work based on concrete by taking
the 40 years and then applying that 40%, 15, of the things on the other chart, and do the
same thing here, and I can do the exact same thing for concrete.
Different levels of maintenance.
If I have to do very light maintenance, that slurry seal we talked about, coming in and
just putting it ... You see the little funny looking lines we put on the roadway, dark
pavement.
All of a sudden, you all come out and trace with something on the ground.
That's to fill in cracks that appear in the pavement, whether it's concrete or asphalt.
We do that for a very big reason.
You don't want water getting in there.
If water gets in there, especially if water gets in there and then it freezes, like we
get once a year for about an hour, it does cause that pavement because water expands
when it freezes.
It causes that pavement to then start break in those conditions.
Once that break gets bigger, then the tires themselves start to make it bigger and bigger
and it just gets worse.
Those crack seals are there for that reason to try to prevent that water from getting
in.
It's a normal part of maintenance.
The roadways we're talking about going into the next bond program, this bond program,
are these roads that have an OCI or a health score of 30 or less.
They're in this red end right here.
It totals to about 360 segments.
In total, what we're proposing as part of this program is an assessment of about 115
lane miles.
You see at the top here, it says 162.
That was the snapshot when this was put together two or three months ago based on projects
in the 2012 bond that we're finishing.
Those get pulled out and get pushed up to the green side, and that's why they're not
into the equation when we start talking about what are we proposing to do going forward.
Any questions here?
Okay.
All right.
We wore you out with bonny brain hickory creek.
Sorry.
I'll come up with one if you ... So you said 115 lane miles that fall in that very low
range.
Oh, okay.
I thought you were saying 115 that you were proposing to redo with the 35 million.
No, no.
Okay.
Got it.
We're about to get into that.
Okay.
I have a question.
Yes, ma'am.
Is there any plan to change your asphalt to concrete or any other practice surface?
It depends on where you are.
Our current philosophy and for a variety of reasons is that we would really prefer that
the major roadways go down the asphalt pathway and that your residential neighborhood streets
go down a concrete pathway.
That being that the traffic is lighter so the need to actually do any kind of maintenance
to reconstruct is very minimal.
So you have 40 years where we don't have to come park in your driveway and make it impossible
to go to the grocery store for a little while while we river the road.
Then on a major roadway, the advantage of an asphalt roadway, the cost is about the
same.
Over the long term, the maintenance is about the same.
The difference is I have to maintain asphalt roadways more frequently.
It's just more expensive to maintain a concrete road because I have to replace a whole piece
of the road versus asphalt.
I got a lot of other options that can be done very quickly.
If I reconstruct an asphalt roadway, if you think of Carroll Boulevard, it's all concrete.
If I have to go replace something in Carroll, I've got to shut down a whole lane of Carroll
for a month to a month and a half on waiting on concrete to get set up.
Now, if I do asphalt, the trade-off of asphalt is you could be driving on it within a couple
of days and I can do long stretches very quickly.
If I think about where the heaviest traffic is and the high volume users where I want
to have the least amount of impact where I'm really doing this work, I want to do it where
I can turn the road back over to use much quicker.
So any concept of that going down for Bonnie Bray or any of the other road projects?
Yes, ma'am.
Awesome.
I have a question.
So of the 115 lane miles that are under 30 OCI right now, let's say we had the money
and the time and the staffing and all of that to just redo them all tomorrow.
Approximately how much would that cost based on the average cost to reconstruct a lane
mile?
If you'll bear with me, we're going to get to that.
Oh, we're going to get to that.
Okay.
We absolutely are going to get there.
All right, so what you have in front of you here are three options that as a staff we've
been digging into as to what can we do?
There are multiple ways that we can go about trying to get our arms around and fixing those
OCI streets that have a health score lower than 30.
One way is what we did in 2012 and 2014 and I would call the shotgun approach.
I just said, what are the worst streets?
I don't care where they are.
I don't care who it impacts, where are the worst ones and we'll go do those.
Worst first.
Here's the problem.
If the worst one ends up here and then another worst one ends up over here, I haven't done
anything with the roadway in between it.
So the reality is, is I go do this project in 2014 on this side and on this side and
then I come back in 2019 or 2020 after I've already made everybody mad once and guess
what?
I'm going to come back and do it again and I might do another segment because it hadn't
fallen into that range yet.
I might come back again another five years later to do that segment.
So part of where our maintenance dollars have gone over the last five or six years is try
to close that gap where we could by taking those segments that weren't accounted for
in the 2012 and 2014 bond program and connecting them.
It's also why it's taken us longer to get through the 2012 and 2014 bond program.
We've actually done more roads than what was just identified in those programs.
Does that make sense?
So that is one option.
We could do that again.
We could do the shotgun approach and we could just go hit everything that's low because
they are the neediest children out there.
We could go do that.
Another option would be okay, let's partner with our other infrastructure providers like
water, wastewater, drainage and let's say what's on their host of projects, what's their
CIP program look like because a water line has the same problem a roadway has, right?
It's going to fall apart over some time.
It will last 40, 50 years and at some point you've got to go replace it or it breaks a
lot.
Once you get one break, the likelihood you get another one is very good.
So you end up replacing segments of other pieces of utilities and what's been a problem
in the past is the water department had their program, the wastewater department had their
program, streets had their program, and drains had their program and everybody's doing their
program and nobody's looking at a cohesive way of doing them together.
So I go tear up your street now and then four months later wastewater comes in and they
do the same thing and you think well I'm done with construction, where did you guys come
from?
And then six months after they're done, streets comes in and they do their part.
So we're there for a very long time and every time one of us leaves you think I'm done but
then somebody else comes.
That is one problem with having aging infrastructure throughout the entire city limits, all of
them at different ages.
It's things from 100 years old all the way up to just installed yesterday and they all
have different issues.
They have different problems that we're trying to deal with and try to merging those efforts.
So one of the options we put together was what I would call the most efficient way of
doing it, at least our version of it I'm sure, there are other options and that was we work
with water, we work with wastewater, where are their needs, where are the lowest OCI
streets, how do we combine those two efforts together and while I may not be able to get
every one of the lowest OCI streets, I'm only going to impact a certain area for the maximum
amount of time, one time, and then I don't come back for say 20 or 30 years unless I'm
doing maintenance, you know, there's a main break or something happens that I need to
go take care of, I might come back then but I'm not totally tearing up the roadway for
long periods of time and then coming back and doing it again.
I think that's the most efficient way of all of the user fees and tax dollars is doing
it that way.
That's one option.
Then there's another option and the other option is kind of a mix of both and when you
start getting into the mix of both, we do locations, we can combine all those efforts
all together, take on what I would call take on an entire neighborhood at one time.
So if I'm coming into your neighborhood, I'm taking into your entire neighborhood for one
period of time, we get all this work done and then I don't want to come back and bother
you for another 30 years.
That's one way.
If I combine the two, then I'm going to be leaving some of the neediest out but not as
many as I would when I'm in that most efficient state, the more efficient way of doing it,
at least in our opinion.
But I'm also not going to miss some of the opportunities of being as efficient as possible.
So we're going to dive into those just a little bit and get into that a little bit more.
So if I go with the shotgun approach, everything under 30 when it comes to an OCI.
And one of the things I do want to make sure that we're cognizant of is when we're talking
about a 30 OCI today or lower, that's that projected OCI we talked about.
The machine came through and told us what the health was five years ago, almost five
years ago.
We've projected what its health is today, both through visual inspection and what our
models are telling us is most likely happening under the pavement.
So they're projecting.
When we actually get the revised survey done, we may find some of these are better shaped
than others and others may be worse than what we think.
That'll dovetail with making a better model for the future as well.
But that being the case, if we take what we are projecting today to be those 30 OCI streets
and less, you have several advantage going down that path.
We get the lowest, the worst done first.
We get them all done.
So we take those 30 OCI streets and we move them into the very good column, the excellent
column and say, those are finished.
I'm not coming back to touch them.
And now they're in a good maintenance program.
So I shouldn't have to deal with that for a much longer time period.
There are some disadvantages to that.
I'm not getting those connections necessarily, right?
So I'm here, I'm here, I'm there.
I'm also losing some economies of scale, right?
So economies of scale.
If I can keep a contractor from driving from this side of town to that side of town and
figuring out where he's going to store his materials and when he's got to have available
when and where I'm going to get a better price because he can stay here in a much smaller
area for longer and then move on to the next project.
If he's moving all over town, he's paying fuel prices.
He's trying to get his suppliers to pay the exact same.
There's a lot of things that happen and making much more difficult.
Combine that with when I take the shotgun approach, I'm going to have a lot of streets
under construction and all kinds of different areas.
And it's very hard for us to start planning what would alternative routes be.
That leads to that construction fatigue, right?
So you get tired of seeing the orange cones and the orange cones are going to be here
for a while.
Those orange cones, when they're everywhere, get you frustrated because it's like, where
do I go next?
Right?
Where do I go now?
As opposed to I get into a methodology that allows me to plan more strategically where
that construction is going to happen and I can give better alternative routes for longer
periods.
I can adjust signal timing.
I can take advantage of some natural flow patterns that would change.
And I can make those improvements strategically along the way.
So I lose that when I take the shotgun approach because I'm basically putting out fire everywhere
I go and I'm just going.
To give you an idea of the cost, if I were in these ranges are zero to five, take the
absolute worst.
We got three streets that fall into that category, they have an OCI projected less than five.
Right?
I don't know how they're holding together is what we're basically saying.
So to redo those roads, now there are less traveled roadways.
They're kind of on the outskirts town so they really hadn't had as much of the maintenance
over time.
And that's part of the reason why they're incurring that cost.
It's got a lower cost because they are smaller segments.
They're not as heavily traveled.
So it's a different, it's not like I'm replacing four lanes of a roadway, right?
It's a very small roadway.
You got a million dollar cost wrapped up in those three roads because they are that bad.
And then we got to redo it.
You got the next category, zero to ten, that includes the zero to five and adds the next
category or projecting that's about a five million dollar investment to bring those roadways
up.
This is, as you come down, you're just seeing the overall cost of if I went zero to 15,
zero to 20, zero to 30.
So if I did all the things, all of the roadways that are under that 30 cap, I'm looking at
a 95 million dollar outlay to bring those roads back up into that excellent condition, ready
to engage in the maintenance program.
What drives the difference in dollar per lane mile as you step through the table here?
We've generated a cost based on those roadways that's built into the program and that's a
variety of issues.
And Danny can actually get into that a little bit more detail, but it might be better to
issue that as a separate statement.
We just want to hear all of it, but it's probably more interesting to you and me.
Well, I mean, I could imagine at a high level that the roads that are worse off now probably
need more work than the roads that are...
They do.
To repair the sensor.
It's a variety of things that go into that and there's a projected amount.
So the issue is that I'm not going to be able to resolve all of those.
I have a contingency built into these numbers just like we did with the other roadways,
but there are a variety of conditions we're dealing with.
So coming off of Bell Street, turning onto Robertson, I know I'm stuck on Robertson Street.
So the first thing you see is welcome to Southeast Denton.
The second thing you see is a huge crater pothole that's right there that's been there
for ages.
When are we going to repair that or get that fixed?
Because I know we've been going and having different meetings and we've been saying that
it's going to get on the maintenance list and it's going to get done.
Just be patient.
This has been a year since I've been going.
So this pothole has been there before then.
So when is that going to get repaired?
We'll go take a look at it tomorrow.
I can't tell you the timeline on that right here, right this moment.
I'd have to...
Danny and his team would have to go assess that.
But you've got the right two guys in here to say, "Hey, somebody go take a look at this
now."
Please.
Thank you.
So would that be an example of the zero to five for the OCI?
It might not be.
There's a variety of reasons.
When we're looking at this OCI score, it's the entire segment.
So it'd be from one intersection to another intersection.
A pothole might have a variety of causes.
And when it starts small and you don't catch it small, it just gets bigger and bigger and
bigger.
And obviously, this is one that needs to be taken care of.
Other things could have happened too.
You could have had what we call a base failure, which means the foundation of the road for
whatever reason starts to crumble or it fails or subsides.
And then the pavement, which is just a bridge over a gap now, falls with it.
That could have happened for some other reasons.
There's a whole host of conditions that could happen to make that work.
And assessment of that on an individual basis is really what it calls for.
So we just have to go out and take a look at it and see what's really causing it.
Are you talking about like sinkholes?
No, not like a sinkhole.
That can happen.
But a pothole can develop for a variety of reasons.
So sometimes you do have water that flows through the dirt, right?
So it's groundwater.
We've all heard of that.
If something may have changed in a drainage pattern, that might have caused it.
More traffic than normal.
So for instance, I know we've had a lot of concrete panels on Bell under construction
being repaired to that segment, which has caused some diversion of traffic as they try
to figure out how to get around.
When you got more traffic than normal, the pavement's been sitting dormant for a while.
And I know that roadway is on one of these low OCI scores.
So now it's got excessive traffic on it that it wasn't intended to have.
And it's old.
It needs some work.
So it just sped up the process of what might have happened if you had just left it alone
for another five years.
Yeah.
So can I get a map or a list of all the streets that have been repaired or faked by the bond
projects?
And then which ones are part of Southeast Denton?
As far as the 2012 and 2014?
Yes, sir.
There was a map.
No, there was a list that was published, but the bond booklets in 2014 and 2012.
And they are available, yes.
Okay.
I think they're available on the website, right?
You have the 2014?
Yeah.
We can get something to you.
Thank you.
It's also in the first packet right here.
Okay.
Also with the part of the bond projects, I know we are fixing quite a few other streets,
but is there any part of this bond money going to fix Southeast Denton?
I've talked to a few of the people in the community.
There's areas in Southeast Denton outside of the tracks that haven't been repaired or
had any pavement since the 1960s.
There's roads still over there that are dirt roads.
So do we plan on correcting that or fixing it or paving them?
In all three of these options, there are roads in that Southeast Denton sector that is in
this program.
Yes.
Okay.
Now one is more focused than the others.
And you'll see that here in a minute.
When we get into the more efficient use, it's more focused to a neighborhood wide solution
as opposed to let me fix the worst ones here and I'll fix the worst one over here and some
of those fall in that Southeast Denton category.
Okay.
Any other questions on this scenario?
All right.
So now let's move into what we were calling the more efficient way of getting these projects
done.
So this was taking a look at where the overall, from a neighborhood perspective, overall worst
OCIs throughout the city and then centering in on neighborhoods so that when we go into
the neighborhood, we work an entire neighborhood one time and the intent being that we bring
all infrastructure up to new or virtually new.
And that includes water, wastewater, includes storm water and in the streets.
So what you're seeing here is our first shot at that is you've got different sectors and
this is not, the numbers on the sectors here has nothing to do with what we deem to be
the most important or least important.
This is just how it was numbered from top to bottom, somebody threw a number on it.
So one of those sectors that we're talking about is Southeast Denton, it's that section
four where there's been an inattention over time from a variety of infrastructure improvements.
Water, wastewater is included in that.
So one of the things you don't see in these numbers here is that there's an additional
expenditure of funds that come from water and wastewater revenues to make this happen.
So when we get into say doing, say we're doing section four, we do the roadways, the roadway
number is here.
So that's 51 segments, it's approximately 13 lane miles and it's almost $11 million
worth of roadway improvements.
What you don't see is the $12 million in water and wastewater improvements that also get
tied to that as well because these are just the bond dollars.
That's a totally different revenue stream but it has an impact because now the water
and wastewater program, they have made some changes based on this plan.
They have a CIP that says well they're going to work their worst and work through that.
Now we're changing the game saying okay we'll hold off on some of the roadway worst conditions
to help you with some of your water and wastewater worst.
If you'll help us even though your water line might not be bad where our OCI is really bad,
if you'll go ahead and do what improvements need to be done there so we don't have to
come back and do that improvement in 30 years, then what this is is balancing the priorities
between the different departments and how do we get the best economies of scale from
contractors because I've got one contractor in an area so I'm going to get a better price.
They're there for one time and then I shouldn't have to come back for another 30 or 40 years.
If I do, it's for a very specific maintenance, it's somebody had a water main break or a
new house got built which is even better, right?
A new house gets built and I've got to put in a new water line.
So those kinds of things are happening but it's not total reconstruction and tearing
up the roadways and utilities that are in the ground.
So that is what this option is and if you were to take the seven sections presented,
we did evaluate these seven sections based on how does that overcome both challenges
for the water/wastewater department as well as the needs that we have on the roadway side
and localize, focus those efforts as efficiently as possible, that's what this option is.
So the total there would be about a 70 million dollar expenditure to put that into the ground.
Now one of the things that is a downside here and I don't have a good number, we're working
on that number, is what does that mean to the overall city's OCI?
So we talked about 64 is the overall city OCI which across the nation, 60, anything
between 60 and 70 is considered a very good condition for your entire city network, it's
a good condition.
That's on average, that's what people shoot for, we're shooting for better because the
overall cost long term are much more marginalized if I go for a better overall score.
If I take the shotgun approach, I can get a more efficient means of shooting the OCI
up quickly, but the problem is right behind that is that whole group of roads that's in
the 30 to 45 range, they're going to start falling into the 0 to 30 range and now I've
got another 300 or 400 segments that I've got to go do the exact same thing to in six
years.
How is this blue smears?
So blue is just…
Are there other streets under there?
So the short answer is that blue line is rich, we should have just put street because that's
all it really is.
It's those roadways under that blue line is the roadway that exists there between 0
and 45 on the health score.
So all streets under the blue.
If it's still above the 45, that's what we would consider part of the maintenance
program because I have an ability to arrest its degradation quickly and shoot it back
up into an acceptable range in that 80 to 90 range.
That's why it's not in there.
These would be roads we'd do something much more significant to.
But it would, again, it would bring the entire neighborhood up to a range where I can prolong
its maintenance over the life cycle of its expected life.
How many of the very poor streets, you've already said it and I didn't catch it, are
not going to be addressed?
We're going to get there on the next slide.
Okay.
All the great questions, perfect segue into the next option.
So under the next option, and this just gives you an example of if we were to take one of
those sections, what would that do?
We would project it on average because there's also roadways we're not going to touch.
On average, it would bring the entire neighborhood from say a 30, 27 to 30 OCI up to a 75.
That would be fairly typical of what we're talking about in this method.
So this would be staff's recommendation is that we combine both.
So that's the hybrid.
This is the hybrid option.
So if we go into working all purely sections or segments of town or neighborhoods of town,
which is where we want to be long-term, recognizing that you got roadways that just, they need
help now.
So how do I combine both this neighborhood approach with I got to get some of the absolute
worst off the books today, but I can't do all of it because if I were to do all of it,
that's $70 million plus $95 million and that's the whole proposition to right there.
So our recommendation is, is you take certain neighborhoods, those that really do have the
worst worst case scenario infrastructure needs, their roads are deteriorating, their water
wastewater pieces are older, they're deteriorating and they need to be done.
So those sectors or neighborhoods of town, we would go do first.
Those to me would be the for sure that we go with that approach, but then we still have
another whole segment of those roadways that fall under 30 OCI that I need to go do something
to so they don't just, they don't become a safety concern at that point, right?
Accidents, damages to vehicles, we don't want that to happen either.
So I want to go address those other issues and then I'm going to be forced to deal with
some of the I'll do here and I'll do there and I'm going to miss the in between.
I'll be forced to deal with that over the next five or six years as we transition from
one methodology to a new more efficient methodology where we have less impact on the neighborhoods.
So what we would propose is if I can get some savings or even potentially on one project
in the proposition and then potentially maybe there's an increase in the overall, see where
this where your conversations lead us, that we would take at least the OCI of 15 and less,
even better 20 and less.
If I were to take 15 and less, you add up 10.7, 17.9 and 10.8 on these neighborhoods.
So those are the three neighborhoods we would recommend today.
That's roughly about 39 to $40 million.
Then you would tag on another 18.2 to hit the 15 and under that are not included in
those neighborhoods.
So it's a little bit of both.
Are these estimates including inflation and some of the other things?
Yes.
Okay.
And how did you, just out of curiosity, roll out section two versus one, three and four?
The average on general throughout the neighborhood, the OCI was higher than the others.
It was very close.
I mean, you could take any one of these seven and be like, we just need to do all seven.
So how do you start picking and choosing, it really came down to where were the most
coincidence of water, wastewater improvements that needed to be done, worse streets overall
throughout the neighborhood.
That's where we picked those top three.
Total construction fatigue.
Where's the biggest bang for the buck across all of those improvements?
And then I want to still plug in those gaps on those really bad streets so that we don't
lose some ground on those.
We kind of get a little bit of both in this scenario and that's where we would recommend
is that we go down this pathway, gearing us up for future bond programs where we get more
into the more efficient way of doing these improvements.
But this would give us a little bit more of that push to take care of the older, worse
off streets and put them in the new category.
So if we went with these highlighted blue sections, can you draw us a map for next time?
Sure.
Didn't you have one?
No.
We didn't have one in this presentation.
But we can put together a map of what that looks like.
We just want to come to you with these because we set this up in such a way that we can talk
a little bit about how far do you want to go.
So we can pick and choose and before we start really laying out a map and what does that
really mean, that's really we want to have the conversation with you.
Sorry, just to clarify, this staff recommended option, you're still suggesting taking care
of everything below 20 and those three sections.
Yes.
Any feedback?
Thoughts?
No, I'm good.
Southeast end.
I would note just knowing that area one is between Sherman and Locust.
That's a low to moderate income neighborhood.
Three is pretty much north of University, west of Carroll, south of University, west
of Carroll.
Right.
That's Hagen Hill Grounds.
Right.
And then four is southeast end and downtown end.
Basically, east of Carroll and all the way over to just not Woodrow, but just east of
Woodrow.
West of Woodrow.
I was going to ask, can you make a list of the streets that are in this recommended
option?
I think that's what I would need to see because I know there was some streets in red on another
map that should be in that less than 20 and I just want to make sure they're still in
that.
Sure.
That would help I think.
We can do that.
Or mapping.
A map.
I'm good with a list.
Cause I know where most of the streets are.
We can provide both.
It's not that hard.
We can do that.
Or a really big map with the names of the streets on it.
Yeah.
We'll do our best.
That might be a really big map, as many streets as we're talking about.
Okay.
Excuse me.
What's that?
If we're going to do the streets, sidewalk sliding?
These are typically not included in this program.
This money is for rebuilding the existing pavement.
Where we would normally get into would be old curb and gutter because we still got to
drain it and you don't want gaps or fractures in the curb and gutter to be the place where
the new road starts to fail because the water's worked its way in and now we've got the freeze
thaw cycle.
There's a variety of reasons but this is really just rebuilding what's there so that it can
have a much longer lifespan.
My son's an engineer.
I am so in this.
So could we have, and this can be completely separate for another conversation perhaps,
but would it be possible to look at what a complete package would look like?
We could do, sure, we can do that.
We do have a separate program for that, there's a sidewalk program that got off to a slow
start in the 2014 bond program and we're proposing, and we're going to get into that next, we're
proposing to get into a much more ambitious sidewalk program and do similar to what we
did with the streets where we leverage state and federal dollars to make it go further.
And lighting as well.
Yes.
Thank you.
I just have a broad question.
So as far as our very poor streets are poor, I know we've been accelerating and improving
those.
Do you all have any historical data on, you know, in previous years, what percentage were
very poor, poor, and kind of how we've been improving the gap, hopefully?
We can do that.
Okay.
Or if there's somewhere I can look, I'm happy to look.
So part of the struggle that we've been working through is we have a mountain of data, literally
a mountain of data.
Some of it is hard copies of paper that hasn't been digitized and we still have to go through
that to give exact results.
Some of it we do have data that's digital back to about 30 years, including our GIS,
where we can get a better semblance of that.
The problem with that data is while it gives us some things, certain other details it doesn't
have.
Sometimes it has dates, sometimes it doesn't.
We can look into that, but it's definitely a very big effort.
Okay.
It's eight o'clock.
How are we, how's everyone feeling?
You want to go?
Can I ask one more question?
Sure.
Everybody's like, gosh.
Can I get something to show me the last time the streets in Southeast Denton were repaired?
I can look for it.
I don't know if we have records for that.
Okay.
Some of those, like you talked about, they were redone in the 60s and the 70s.
They're going to be hard copies.
I might have those.
I would just have to look into that.
I don't know.
Okay.
Thank you.
Right.
Good point.
So one of the things we haven't gotten to yet, but it's part of this discussion.
So you see the first time we put 35 million out there for streets, and now we're at 70.
Where is that coming from?
So Ryan Road, some of the other roads in this discussion, that is what this dialogue is
about is are there things that trade off to make the streets portion a bigger portion
of this package than was originally set out?
So that's part of this discussion is for us to determine how big does this package get?
Do you want to let a Ryan or a Robinson go?
Is that something you want to do?
We don't want to, but that's part of the dialogue here is where does this go?
So Todd, how many more packages?
We're about two-thirds away through your presentation.
We have one more really fun one that probably take a good 30 minutes to get through, and
then the others are pretty quick.
Just one option, and we'll staff definitely stay here when we go through the entire presentation
tonight.
Next week the plan is to focus on open space and public art and whatever else we have left
over.
I didn't mention finance, but as we talk about the finance task force later that may come
into that sort of maybe room next week if we want to push sidewalk and street lighting
or just lighting next week, so that's definitely up to you all, but we could push sidewalks
to next week.
Okay.
Is that acceptable to everyone or do you want to go ahead and dive into the sidewalks?
I also want everyone to have to be fully conscious at the end of the presentation.
So we do have to talk a little bit about finance task force, why don't we pause on sidewalks
and roll that into next week, and then we'll talk, cover briefly the finance task force
and then adjourn, does that sound reasonable?
Do you want to get through the remainder of the projects on here, excluding sidewalks
and street lights, or do you want to just stop here and pick up?
I don't think it'll take that long, but again, that's up to you.
Is that as long as five minutes or 20 minutes?
I can go as fast as you want to go.
So it's really Robes Robinson Road, Ryan Road, and Jim Crystal?
Yes.
All right, let's do, let's go, Ryan, what's next after the sidewalks, Robinson?
So Robinson would be the next.
Okay.
So Robinson Road, there is a missing piece, so the state came in and did 2499, they put
in that nice six-lane facility that provides a nice connection south and north.
They also put in four lanes from just west of 2499 and tied back into the city of Corinth
on the other side.
And we have this segment here in the middle, going over to 2181, that's two lanes.
So what we're proposing here is to go ahead and complete the two lanes that are missing.
The existing two lanes are fine, they're where they're supposed to be.
We just need to go forward and put the other two lanes in and that puts that connection
there between 2181 and 2499.
That's really all this project is.
Okay.
All right.
Any questions?
I need to make it the same design as the other two, with the median in the middle so we go
to six.
It would be an exact mirror of what you see out there, we'll just progress on that.
Any questions or comments on this?
Okay.
All right.
So Ryan Road, this is the one we talked about earlier.
What you saw, this slide here is what was in your backup, the presentation you saw on
Monday and we did just, I mean, we had the results of this come in Monday and we dove
into it Tuesday and Wednesday.
So now we're coming back to where's there some flexibility in this proposed program.
When Hickory Creek is built out, the demands on Ryan are minimized, long term.
That's pushing us out into the 2045 timeframe.
So at most, what we see as a staff is a three lane section with trails and bike side paths.
I mean, just a very connectable, walkable scenario that ties you into an existing trail
corridor and then a three lane roadway in between both intersections and doing major
improvements at only the two major intersections at 2181 and 1830.
So it's a much smaller project.
Now there's a range down there.
You see the range from 10 million to 25 million.
That really depends where you want to go and how much flexibility you want to build into
the overall bond program for other items.
So you could do a two lane roadway.
The reason we're recommending a three lane is you do have more residential neighborhoods
coming into that area and not all of their entrances line up.
That's a history of allowing them to be disjointed.
So one of the easiest ways to solve that is you leave the center lane open for people to
turn left and they get them off the main lane so people can still continue to drive.
If we were to stay with a two lane roadway, at some point they'll get congested enough
that it starts backing up traffic a little bit.
So we're recommending the three lane.
That's the $25 million option.
There is some leveraging going on.
That's why you see the city cost being 19 million.
The state will typically invest within 600 feet of any intersection.
They'll put money into it.
They're going to be doing $18.30.
They are doing $21.81.
And then we just have the 600 feet on both sides that are city streets that we'd be working
with them to fund.
That's an endeavor we're working on.
It's about a $5 million, $5 to $6 million gap for those intersections.
There's also some utility work that's another funding source.
There's a water line that runs through there.
That would be another place that also makes up part of that $6 million delta.
That's where we get the difference that we could then move this money over to.
The $10 million option would be we just do the intersection improvements at both ends
and we just leave a two lane roadway.
We would just come in and overtop the existing roadway to give it a longer life.
But that doesn't give you the walking space.
For $10 million it wouldn't because it would really be focused on the roadway utility improvements
in the intersections.
So the $25 million resolves the drainage issues.
It adds curb and gutter so I can put the sidewalks and the side paths all out there.
If I go with the $10 million option I'm leaving the bar ditches that are there for the majority
of that stretch because the drainage is one of the cost differences here that really drive
it up.
It makes it more expensive when I got to start handling the drainage.
So that's why you see this range here.
The $10 million would be a very bare bones.
We'll do the intersections and then we'll redo the roadway and then we'll move on.
The $25 million would do some improvements to the entire length of the roadway as well
as some aesthetic and recreational improvements.
Other things, quality of life improvements is really where we would be going.
It would make it a lot safer for the schools and the neighborhoods at the $25 million level.
The difference being when we were originally pricing this project we were seeing it as
being around a $44 million cost to the city under the four lane divided roadway.
So if you go with the more expensive option you're taking about $20 million out of that
project and it's available now to go somewhere else like streets.
If you were to go to the $10 million which is still going to service the area it'll still
bring the level of service up to an A long term.
Now you've got that much more room you could put towards streets.
They're just things to consider as we go forward.
That was in a previous study that looked at the overall movement of traffic.
What that study also did is it looked at Hickory Creek going up and stopping at 1830 and you
having to get on 1830 and go south like you do today to Country Club Road and Crawford.
That was the major road to get you to 35W so it still pushed traffic back up to Ryan.
If we don't connect Ryan to Vintage which has a lot of challenges, one being that you'd
have two rail crossings at an intersection which makes it really hard to deal with, you'd
have that scenario but now you almost guarantee it's got to be a four lane divided because
Vintage then ties in on the other end and you really don't need a six lane facility
further south.
So you've got to trade off here because the system is trying to equalize itself out.
The prime draw is going to be the homes to the south are trying to get east and west
and that's why when you take Hickory Creek to a six lane roadway long term in the 2045
time frame and beyond you still don't need a big Ryan Road and you don't even need to
connect it.
It's a huge expense trying to bridge over the floodplain, over the railroads, doing
a whole slew of things to make that connection.
You could do it one time with Hickory Creek and you resolve the vast majority of the mobility
issues in the area.
What would be the timing on those two if we did them both together in a patch?
Hickory Creek and Ryan?
Would we want to?
If we did, I'm just curious.
The advantage of a Hickory Creek is so much of the proposed Hickory Creek is offline or
where the current road is.
So Hickory Creek now goes up and we're going to go straight.
So we could be building the vast majority of Hickory Creek Road while traffic is still
doing what they're doing today.
And then once you turn some of those lanes over to traffic, then you can take old Hickory
Creek Road off line and you move traffic on there.
Part of our concept is also that you'd have two bridges for that six lane.
So we'd build one bridge and I can put all the traffic there and then I can be working
the other bridge.
So there's a lot more flexibility because there's nothing out there.
Ryan, we could do at the same time and when it's less expensive to do the roadway, then
there's more flexibility in how we spend the bond funds to be able to get it done faster.
I'm not regulated on when those dollars become available and David can talk more about this
than I can.
But of course one advantage of one of my pet projects, tying advantage to Ryan as you mentioned,
is that the fire station is already there and we're going to have a police substation
there and it would be a straight shot over to Ryan to serve that neighborhood because
the fire station that is now off Teasley spends an awful lot of time going out to 35 and serving
the retirement communities that are on Wind River.
There's a continual need for emergency services provided throughout the community, yes ma'am.
Okay.
Any other questions or comments on this?
Okay.
Jim Crystal Road, this is that section three or sector three of the development zone is
where all the infrastructure is going as far as industrial development, large scale commercial
distribution centers.
Where we're trying to go with this project is ask for the design dollars to get this
in place so that when these large developments come in that US cold storage or whoever else
might come in after them, the designs are incomplete.
They just have to build their piece of the road, not their piece of the road and design
it.
The disadvantage when they do both things is now whoever's in first starts dictating
where the road's going to go.
Whereas if we design it now, we set where the road's going to be and then we enter
into more of these public private partnerships.
That piece, there's a value to that that developer, they're absolutely cognizant of.
So there's a more willingness to jump into that we'll all build it because I'm not going
to put $300, $400, $500,000 into designing my piece of the road.
That part's done.
So that's where this money is being leveraged is development as it comes in and continues
to come in, brings impact fees into the area.
Other partnerships that do exist out there that have an interest here would allow us
to immediately go to construction as quickly as possible.
So this would relieve pressure off of Airport Road?
Airport Road, especially when it goes into construction because that will be going into
construction in the next three to four years?
When was that?
Pre-Temps 9?
He's off his own road.
So Airport Road is starting and there's schematic things so it does not have a date.
They're designing it and laying the schematic so they can move forward with right-of-way
and from this point.
And this is, and that's a textile project?
That is a textile project.
When it's done though, it will be a city street.
So it's going to be a city street.
It's going to be a city street.
That's going to be a city street.
It's going to be a city street.
Okay.
Any other questions on Jim Kristol?
And then the last, this is purely an update.
So Sherman, it was originally on our discussion with Council.
It's been in the books for a long time.
The Outer Loop has a lot of attention by the Council of Governments.
It's being a priority focus, especially in this segment of the North Texas area.
They would like to get from 35 all the way over to McKinney.
Just to clarify, the Outer Loop is not Loop 288.
It is not Loop 288.
It's the other loop.
Right.
It is.
It's the future loop that's not looped yet.
It's about a 235-mile loop around the entire Metroplex area.
So it's designed to get people quickly around the entire Metroplex and give an alternative
route, much like you see in Austin where they've got multiple avenues to get all the way around.
Depends on how badly you want to get there.
But what we do anticipate is that that Outer Loop, as you're seeing a lot of traffic come
in these farm-to-market roads from Prosper and from other communities to the North Valley
View, they're taking other roadways to get into downtown Denton.
So when we started talking this through with the state and with the Council of Governments,
does a four-lane or a six-lane roadway really make sense, seeing as how we're seeing a ton
of residential neighborhoods coming and there's a lot of commuter traffic coming?
What this really looks like is a spur between the Outer Loop and Loop 288.
So we've talked to both parties.
Council of Governments said that sounds like a great idea.
So they're really pushing TextDOT to take on that project as their own project.
And in the long run, what it would be would be a highway, main lanes with frontage roads
that connect those two loops.
Then once you get inside Loop 288, it'd be back to a primary arterial roadway.
So this is free to us?
Yes.
Okay.
Is that an upbringing?
It is.
I mean, we're doing some minor improvements right now.
There's no such thing as free.
You'll live with the construction when they do it, right?
Overall, yeah.
We just don't have to buy for it.
People at Hartley Field are going to want to buy for it.
Question?
Yes, ma'am.
Is there a schematic that shows this artery?
There is, exists in a variety of places.
It does show up on our mobility plan.
It's outlined out there.
It's a little hard to see because it's a weird color mixed in with some other things.
But it is on there.
Yes.
I know most of the roads that are owned by TextDOT, this one I don't remember.
Once this is all built, who will be maintaining it, TextDOT or us?
So that's part of the discussion we're having with TextDOT right now.
When it goes from Loop 288 to the outer loop, it will remain TextDOTs.
When it comes inside the loop and improvements are completed along that Sherman Drive all
the way into downtown, the anticipation is it will be turned over to the city.
Those were the last of the projects except sidewalks.
Okay.
And streetlights.
Yes.
We'll do next.
So we'll defer sidewalks and streetlights till next week?
Yes, sir.
I'd like to move on to agenda item C. So we all approved forming a finance task force
to look at some key questions, some of which were in the charter from the council.
We met last week and discussed and basically outlined what we see is the questions we're
going to pursue and we're going to get with David and the staff and try to work through
these over the next two to three weeks.
So one key assumption that we concluded upon is that there's a 4% cost growth, which is
what we're using, correct me if I'm wrong, David, in the current projections, correct?
Assess value.
Yes, assess value, growth and assess value.
And that may appear conservative compared to approximately a 10% growth in appraised
value over the last few years.
So some of the questions that we're going to work through are first, and this is what
the council asked us to do, is look at what does it take to stay at the effective tax
rate?
In other words, what would be included or not included if we stayed at just the effective
tax rate?
And city managers had some comments on that or some legislative changes that will certainly
impact that.
Then other questions that we developed are what are the growth assumptions that avoid
a tax rate increase?
What will be the future tax base?
So when you start seeing all these green areas, what should we expect and not expect in a
reasonable time frame, say four to five years?
And then the next is what can we achieve without increasing citizens' tax rates?
And then lastly, how much of a tax rate increase would we be willing to propose?
So we as a formal body collectively.
So those are the questions that we're going to work through.
We're going to bring back recommendations to this group for consideration.
And then so that when we come hopefully bringing this all together, where we have a list of
projects and what we think the funding level should be and can bring that complete package
to the city council.
Any questions or comments on that?
Could we have a list of the people who are on that subcommittee in case those of us who
don't want to be on the subcommittee, if we have something we want to ask or contribute.
I'll just mention it right now, but I'll have to send a list of data so he can send that
out.
John, can you raise your hand, John?
And then Janet, Susan, Eric, myself, Tim Crouch, and Randy Robinson, but we'll send that out
through David if that's all right.
Sure.
And our intent is for these meetings to be open meetings, and our goal would be to have
them here so that they're recorded, and we're as transparent as possible with those meetings
as they go forward.
So there'll be public meetings and open just like these.
As far as the content, as we look at those scenarios with the growth, as we have those
meetings, we can get to a point where we see what different scenarios do to the model and
talk through why we have the projections we do and everything goes along with that.
Have you all determined when you all will meet?
Right now we've tentatively planned for Thursday, June 27th at 3, but that's new news to David,
so he ...
You don't have anything else to do?
That's what we're shooting for.
Same day-ish?
Right.
So that's all, that's something I was going to talk to him after this meeting, so we'll
get that out to you.
Sorry.
All right, any other questions, comments for the good of the group?
I just would like to thank you all, the presentation was very helpful.
I really enjoyed the graphs.
You know, I think it's good to see these different options, right, to see what the priorities
are and that sort of thing.
One thing I'll just mention, I don't have the details to know what the scope would be,
but I know over the past decade, maybe Susie can chime in, the mobility plan and the bike
plan have kind of started to come together, and my impression is that they've taken advantage
of existing projects and some wider streets here or there that they could do something
with with some paint, right, and so I guess what I would like to see is a proposal for
maybe a very small portion of the streets program could be allowed to be used for streets
that are maybe in between the 20 and 45 range, if it directly aids making those missing connections
in the mobility plan for multimodal access?
Could it be there's always to do?
Sure, and really it's just a question of scope, of would a small investment there make a big
difference or not?
Well, the biggest thing I would throw out there would just be that the mobility plan
as it stands is pretty questionable the way it was put together and really implemented.
There were a lot of missing pieces in a variety of places.
We currently have under contract a design professional to help us do a complete overall
of the mobility plan where we would have a master thoroughfare plan, a bike plan, a pedestrian
plan, and then combine that with the ADA transition plan so you have a complete mobility plan
keeping in mind that I need to be context sensitive where I'm supposed to be, a complete
streets methodology, and then that develops a much better and more comprehensive CIP.
So could you do it now?
I could, but I'd be doing a lot of band aid that I might undo later, whereas if I take
a much more comprehensive approach and put something in for future planning so we do
it right going forward, I think that would be a better option.
And that's where we're proceeding now.
We have that professional on board over the next six months to a year.
You'll see multiple ways of being involved in that through some public meetings and other
things.
Now I know we may have gone over this, don't everybody look at me like, oh here she goes.
But about the map again, I know I asked about getting the map to the distribution of the
bond funding, felling street projects, can we get a map of that, or is it online as well?
The streets that were--
That are felling like--
That one's an overwhelming amount of data.
It would be hard to put that online.
We can provide those maps to you, absolutely, but trying to put that on a web portal where
somebody can get it, it is a lot of information.
It's part of what makes it so challenging for us to be prepared to have this discussion
is it's a lot of information all in one place.
But we can provide what you would like to see, absolutely.
Okay, could you please, thank you.
David?
I just want to make one note.
We've gotten a lot of great questions in the meetings so far, and also via email from everyone.
We were trying to address as many of those questions as possible during the presentations.
After we get through next week, we would have then gone through kind of the detail of each
of the presentations, a lot of the follow-up meetings.
So we have a list of all those questions.
We're working through them.
So we'll either get those back to you during presentations, or we'll provide memos in future
meetings where you can kind of see all that written out.
So we are keeping track of those, and those will come back to you.
I was just going to ask you, because I saw that you had emailed us, you know, what we
said previously for May 30th.
So that's going to be on a week.
Every week you're going to let us know all the audio that's been taken, what questions
we've asked.
Sure.
So I guess two answers.
Yes, we'll have minutes that will be approved at each meeting.
Just given our short turnaround time, to give the agendas posted on Monday and having these
on Thursdays, a lot of times it'll be just kind of two meetings back.
But we always have last meeting recorded, and in this room we have better capabilities
with the recording.
It's going to be available online very quickly, and the recording quality and sound will be
much better.
So obviously they'll be there to go back and view if you want to see in detail.
And I guess to that point I would just ask, is everyone comfortable with the meeting in
here?
Yes, we have a short turnaround to make sure it works.
Great.
It's better.
Yeah.
Perfect.
Because I'd like to see like a contribution of everybody included in the discussion on
paper, if that makes sense.
Sure.
Yeah.
All right.
Thank you.
Any other comments or questions?
Can I have a motion to adjourn?
So moved.
Thank you.