good morning everyone welcome to the mobility committee today is Wednesday October the 30th
2024 tonight 10 a.m. council work session room it looks like we do have a quorum present
for the meeting and our first item is the citizens comment on agenda items this section
allows citizens to comment on any individual consideration on the agenda do we have any
has anybody heard of anyone okay thank you second items are individual consideration
a mc-24-033 consider approval of the minutes of September 25th 2024 I'm sure we all have
read those and absorbed those this morning can we get a move that we approve of minutes
this is great can we get a second second all right any discussion all right so can we get
a vote yeah your name okay that sounds like it is approved so thank you we're gonna go
on to be mc-24-034 receive a report and hold a discussion regarding the city of Denton
transportation mobility project status report so it says 45 minutes that's for your questions
because it won't take me that long as long as I can get somebody to help me turn it on
we will hold our questions to the end you know all this stuff already I'll just give
you the new stuff oh it's right there look at that okay we'll skip the summary that's
just the dollars that we're chasing about five billion dollars on all these different
projects I'm gonna make it a little bit smaller so on 35 north essentially what the order
of processing is good the order that we're gonna do this in is the the oh the purple
one oh seven six is being constructed now with a 455 project oh eight one will then
go next and then oh seven four at the bottom yellow will go next and then the green at
the top will go last and the reason we're holding that last one honestly is some of
the projects we have in Denton County like the 121 corporate project I don't know if
I told you about that that's about to go under the knife in Lewisville just south of where
the main streets already being built and if it comes in with a cost overrun they're gonna
borrow the money from that northern project for a year cycle so that's why they're holding
off on it so the northern project is that the green project takes it from North of Sanger
to the county line right you're gonna hold off on that one if something goes to see what
happens on the project in the south and we're working on utilities for each one of those
sections I give you the utilities we're working on y'all are primarily impacted by oh seven
four and that everything's running according to the process now this is the merge project
and we're gonna show you the map but this project you'll start to see start January
we had a pre-con and they're gonna get started in January of 2025 so they're giving you your
Thanksgiving and Christmas and then they're gonna break your world that's it's a painful
it's gonna be a very painful project it's 56 months long when the doctor says this is
gonna hurt a lot so you've been seeing a lot of utility movement out there that's that's
the game that we're doing I had to have a delayed start because of those utilities everything's
making its way through the process the contractor has been notified that January will be the
notice to proceed so yeah and as soon as it starts remember what we do as soon as we start
we'll then have a next page we'll have the construction report and we'll show you what
the status is on the project as it goes and we'll give you an estimated completion date
okay so the other part that's gonna probably make y'all's life miserable is the mayhill
job we're gonna let this in June right so June you got January the merge goes under
the knife hard and then in June this one will let and this is from 288 all the way south
the mayhill because remember we're going to be doing those direct connects over brinker
and so that will start and this is a like I said every time the mayhill interchange
will be bigger than the 288 interchange at golden triangle and so it's a big footprint
and there'll be lots of trauma there too okay I live off of that so I mean I always check
the the the map to see where the traffic is before I decide to head towards 35 sometimes
I'm gonna head towards Gainesville yeah again the utilities are the critical path but we've
got those if they're not highlighted that means they're not a problem if they are highlighted
that means we're just telling you what we did last okay so the frontage roads segment
this is a segment at city didn't interest to dance from 407 north to 24 not 24 2499
2449 2449 yes and that if for those that don't know that also is we'll show it that's also
will be absorbed in the 2449 will be absorbed into the Luke 288 job on the west we'll get
to that in a second WSP is doing the work we have a 213 million dollars and we have
a about a 213 million dollar job we're going to do we have to have a meeting with the city
staff and text that because I think there's a interchange and it slips my mind but it's
one of y'all's that they were planning on not building anything but the frontage roads
through that area but I think both the city of Denton and and the county are saying developments
going faster than we thought so we got to figure out a way to include it and if it's
a money thing then we're going to borrow it from that project north of Sanger so we're
going to have a meeting on this and then we'll be able to come back and tell you we'll give
you a schematic of what is and isn't included in that interim job you really are holding
your questions okay this is a little trade-outs for talking about this is 2449 but it will
be tight the loop will take over that portion of it and then there'll be a t-intersection
for 2449 here and then that's the loop going back up around past the airport back over
288 this job is supposed to be ready let in April of 2026 it's about 227 million dollars
it's a controlled access facility that means it has frontage roads and main lanes and grade
separation so you'll be great separated 380 it'll be great separate the railroad and the
other major arterials that the city's identified in the southern portion and when if we had
to face construct it we'll build the inside northbound frontage road first because that
allows development to come to the loop and establish connections that will be permanent
going forward okay and then because Luke 288 is on the north part is got a lot of development
impacting it we started the environmental clearance on that we're going to be done
July 25 which means we can protect the corridor we also need a meeting with city staff related
to Giesling area and a development that we need to work out but this is a again taken
288 which is a is a controlled access facility by permit and what we're going to do is build
it as a controlled access facility by structure which means we'll have frontage roads main
lanes and grade separations and that's you know ninety two million dollars right now
we've got Westwood on it with Mark Sluder working on that and we it also includes for
the next project I think this body break connection from 77 to the loop that's the y'all y'all
call that phase seven of Bonnie Bray we've included it in the 288 job because we needed
to and the state and the NPO is committed to fund that section so that's all yellow
it means there's that's different from your last month's meeting but pretty much everything
in there I've already told you about and that body ray seven segment seven I just showed
as an individual project but this is what's included in the 288 job and it'll has the
same schedule as the 28 north project okay FM 1515 we're going to be ready to let by
the probably the end of next year we had to back up and do some design modifications for
some of the companies there that let us know that they didn't like our design after we
had cleared so we had to go back and do a reval to change it and so we're back on track
it's a 70 million dollar roadway it'll be six lines when done and the intent is the
historically the intent has been the city has made commitments in the past that they
want to take this off system so they can manage it the way they want to manage it because
it goes right to your airport 1173 this is the north part so we're rerouting it as a
city requesting the third floor plan to Bartow Road and we're coming in to town and we're
working out some details with a crumb right now on they have angled parking and they have
parking in the middle of where median would be angle parking there well that's going to
go away so we're working with them on finding a we've done had to do this in 377 in our
gala as well find a way to do some adjacent parking and we've had luck in the past with
tech stock being able to include that in the project but we're ready to let August of next
year part of this will be built with the 35 job the merge because we go all the way up
to 77 but just past 77 so the tie-in for the new 1173 will be stubbed out there there's
a lot of utility I mean dried a lot of drainage issues here and we're going to do the crossing
at the railroad track is fairly expensive as well we'll skip the outer loop because you're
about to get inundated with that in a good way how about that elmond locus huh yeah tell
you what the city made it clear that they really wanted that thing done before Halloween
I'm not sure why but they got it done and y'all's partner with your staff and it was
it was they got it done I was when does the north part start recording this we're working
on it the tests that do with the timing of the county's issuance of their bonds so we're
probably looking at another issuance in the first of the year so that you don't take out
650 million dollars you take it out in tranches as you need it so it'll probably be an authority
issuance and then we'll partner with the city on that northern partner goes all the way
to 380 yeah so just a cash flow issue all right and the further the rest of y'all those
are just we usually do a test at the end to see if y'all know what these acronyms are
without looking but you know you've been doing really well but not calling out acronyms yes
I tried my my wife said she was gonna be watching so I had to yeah so questions I mean you guys
are usually peppered me all right I'm sure some questions came through and you're ready
for questions and and this this is likely a me problem I was thinking that we numbered
Bonnie Bray the numbers from north to south is that incorrect from south to north south
to north okay so your your Bonnie Bray is seven so the reason they're that way is because
we started in the south first the county in the previous bond program we had money with
the city to build Bonnie Bray from the south of southern terminus north past vintage and
then the next segment and then during that time we also added vintage where we took it
from Bonnie Bray and took it back over to the to the to the frontage road for the 35
w so we started in the south and we've been like creeping north okay and then the very
very big first of your presentation page three is it is that yeah three um where specifically
does the construction start on 35 w and 35 e go to the marriage you want to merge okay
so I get that question a lot and the answer is everywhere because they had once the contract
signed the contractor has full rights to that entire corridor we what the first thing we'll
do in January is we'll get you their their their intent on where they're going to work
and what their phasing is and we've been the staff that was there they proposed a phasing
of that project at the at the kickoff meeting and and we can we can share that to you on
a regular basis but it changes with circumstances so they can start everywhere because it's
not they don't go build it in increments they build it from the you know below ground up
and so they have to do all the underground work all the grading in in linear links and
then they put the road up and typically where the road to this is this big they have a lot
of areas they can work outside of the existing lanes if you go drive down 35 and I'm not
encouraging you to do that but if you get to Dallas North Dallas where they're doing
that design build project you'll see they've been able to build almost half the project
on the on the on the I'm going to call it the west side not really having to touch any
of the main lanes yet because they're building big structures that's how wide the roads are
going to be it's the same thing here that's all I got all right good you ready yep okay
so do I don't want to get into the outer loop segments but do we know on the 74 CSJ in the
first project do is the plans county plans for the rodeo alignment and how that's fitting
in finalized they'll have that okay all right cool and then yeah I wrote my notes for the
merge of five years of hell that's my only note I don't think I said that it's painful
okay for the the 288 where we the right of way acquisition is on hold man I was hoping
you know I wouldn't notice that because I get in trouble every time I answer this text
dot and as a whole had a reduction in their revenue stream because they peaked at 2024
that was I don't know why they would shoot for that that year this year but every year
after that till 2030 it's kind of the funds are going down in order to level off that
decline they took money out of their developer authority and they took money out of the district
discretionary funds to put into construction so for example the Dallas district submitted
for their construction budget I mean engineering budget consultant budget well about 1.9 billion
dollars and the commission cut it to 1.4 so they got they were doing their problem is
they were doing too good job at getting these projects ready and when they get them ready
they find the money to let and that includes buying the right away and utilities in advance
of these projects being funded they don't have enough money in the right away budget
either now and so what the district has been telling us we have to say is that they are
prioritizing they're not stopping projects they're just prioritizing projects that are
currently funded so it's not currently funded but you get your funding by getting it ready
to let so it's a chicken and the egg circular I think by next year though we'll have this
resolved because they do see this is impacting a lot of projects statewide but what the county's
doing and what we encourage everybody to do is we're doing a lot of these projects we're
doing outside of their cash flow so we pay for the engineering we do all the work and
so we're going to have our projects further along because all these other projects that
they're having to put on hold some of their putting on hold from a design standpoint as
well we'll keep moving on ours outside of their system so that we're when the money
does come back we're further along in the process and we can make ourselves whole out
of out of the funding when it does materialize so I get that question too what the county
has been doing for 30 years is they do the advanced planning and I haven't the county
hasn't had to put money into construction for these projects for a very long time because
we get the environmental clearance done in the schematic the done the right-of-way map
done and then a lot of times we do the PS any as well so we put in you know somewhere
in the neighborhood of 8 to 9 percent of the total cost of the project but rarely none
of the construction itself so that's where we get our money back okay I also know okay
this will probably you can tell me if this is in the outer loops bits or not but because
I'm thinking y'all had that meeting with the the Kingsway folks for the emergency access
to 288 do we get any take homes out of that it just said you had a meeting yeah I don't
do the technical stuff so I'm hoping your staff knows that but we're doing whatever
we got to do to keep those people understanding what we're doing so I can get you that answer
like after this okay and then the do we have any clue what happened on the the Elman Locust
asphalt quality failures what what went wrong are you talking about on Eagle yeah for the
first segment that we we pushed through and got got in twice before the whole lean activities
so the only part I know was is that there there was some heaving of the pavement due
to a drainage pipe being clogged but I don't know what that I've not seen that yet from
from yeah Elman Locust that that you in there south of downtown we had to have a read you
know torn up and rebuilt right we it was that was a that's what I was told that the heaving
was caused because the pipe got was cleared by debris I'm not sure what debris and it
pushed up yeah I was wondering coming up Trevor crane director of capital projects so since
tech stop was running that project we didn't ask for all the testing reports those types
of things so I don't know the actual reason why the pavement failed but they only had
to replace the wearing course so it wasn't a subgrade issue my assumption is it was something
to do with the asphalt mix or when they placed it that it was either too hot too cold there's
a lot of things that could have happened but the testing came back said that it didn't
meet our specifications so tech stop made them remove the wearing course and put down
the correct product that that appreciate that that's all my they didn't ask me for any money
so I didn't know about it yes so you said that text on is having its funding go down
till 2030 is that going to return to the like current level at 2030 or just talk a little
bit more about that situation please it's very difficult because so it's cyclical under
cyclical everyone to say it like I've been doing this for about 30 plus years and funding
goes up funding goes down just depends on the mood of the legislature at the time so
what typically happens is you have money in an account and the legislators and I don't
mean this in any disrespectful way they see the text that still has five six seven billion
dollars in their account and they think they don't need any money with the problem is that
they're already allocated four years out to project so the money is not spent but it's
encumbered and so when they come back and ask for more money they're going you haven't
spent what you got and that's a that's a perennial problem we have that's why this last cycle
the commission not only spent a hundred billion dollars a year for the two year by annum they
also have a let mark that they want everybody hit that's why we're telling you if you have
a lot date you have to hit your lead date because they want to keep their their funding
allocations up because they get scrutinized by the state and so they've taken away tools
from us so that's also hard but it's just cyclical I mean if they they sometimes they
give us money sometimes they don't and when this crop that's there now goes awake this
is like the fifth one I've gone through we're preparing to go back to what works and they
that's controlling congestion through these total managed lanes so a lot of these facilities
we're building or planning to build or will accommodate that refit and the reason I say
that is is the previous 10 years before 2020 and on we built 21 billion dollars worth of
roads with seven billion dollars worth of money from the state and that's because we
used all those tools that we originally had now we don't have but it's just cyclical and
then the thing is is if I'm working for you you don't panic in the valley right you just
keep moving because when they do bring back the money they want to show instant success
and if you stalled when you didn't think there's any money and you kept going and when the
money shows you're further ahead than everybody else you get funded first so I don't really
it doesn't really bother me this is the first time in 30 years except for the Maharishi where
they didn't have money for right away.
That's interesting thank you for giving us that you know that lesson that's a lesson
lesson learned did you have any questions at all okay well I had one question in particular
I'm always interested in that 380 to exchange to 288 and I drive out that way kind of frequently
and I haven't in my vision figured out where that's exactly going to be we've got a drawn
we can show you we probably should we had a public meeting we had a public meeting on
it that I apparently missed it's okay all that means is I can we can send you some some
dot shut drawings on it but the drawing that Chandra and I were talking about yesterday
which shows the the technically and locally preferred alignment on that property that's
in question and it does clip some of their development so we've got to address that so
we know generally I mean enough to tell a building that it's going to lose a corner
if it doesn't move yeah it's not built yet where the alignment is but it's again we're
talking about being cleared next summer yeah so we're we've got an alignment that we believe
everybody's happy with and for some reason because that area appears to be congested
to me it may be the canopy or whatever it is it appears to be congested to me and in
my mind I'm thinking of a ramp you know of some sort that is going to come above so it
essentially there isn't some elevation to it because you have to what's going to happen
is if you're coming west on 380 and you want to go on to 288 you'll drive and you'll go
up onto the connection ramps and go straight and it becomes 288 and it goes right into
288 Windsor Kings Row and you just keep going okay if you want to go into town and you want
to hit 288 south of where we're going north you'll exit come down and under the ramp going
up and go to the existing 288 and then you can go into town or go south on the so it
is a it's elevated in areas but we also reduce the design speed I think down from 70 to 60
miles an hour which gives us a little tighter right curve you'd think people that are up
on a bridge would want to drive slower anyway so we're serpentine through there so if you're
in the coming going west on 380 you need to be over in the further two right lanes to
do your business on 288 that's where you want to be on the outside lines to get to anything
on the at grade okay great thank you I'll get an exhibit for you okay that'll be great
I don't have any additional questions but I certainly do appreciate and I think we all
appreciate you coming through and and being transparent with us on some of the stuff that's
happening I don't have a good enough memory to lie to people I mean either I'm really
really I'm good at that or bad at that I don't know which every way but also I'm also very
excited about the Mayhill project yeah just getting off the freeway now and going over
to Mayhill to you know off the bypassing that 288 yep you all that's a good job I mean we're
all excited I use it all the time now I mean I live out there so yeah yeah I do too I like
it and then what about that Woodrow North South part that goes to the Edwards going over that
little railroad track it's at a city question over there about Mayhill you know how Mayhill
hits a Woodrow and then you can go over Woodrow and instead of going over Woodrow I might
want to make a right turn and go towards my home if I lived over if I lived over to the
right to Edwards y'all know where it was am I seeing the right road?
Do you mean Colorado? Colorado oh I'm saying Woodrow I meant Colorado I'm sorry Colorado
yeah I'm not sure exactly what we're talking about if you let me know we'll look at it
but yeah so the Mayhill project did it did limit the right hand turn if you're going
north on Mayhill you can no longer turn right and go over the DCTA tracks so you'll have
to go straight over the Mayhill bridge and back around if you want to do that same thing
if you're on the other side you've got to take a right come all the way back to Mayhill
and then come over the bridge so it's going to stay like that it's going to stay like
that yes ma'am that was the whole intent though is to not have that great crossing and I actually
live back there and I do that what he just said you gotta go around yeah all day long
it's okay it's way better than it ever was okay okay well I haven't done that so but
I've been kind of looking over there and seeing what's going on um well if that's it do you
have anything else it seemed like you wanted to say something all right well thank you
very much I'll be back in a second with these guys okay thank you okay um we're we're going
to move on to CMC two four days zero three five receiver report and hold a discussion
regarding the Denton County outer loop so excited we're excited so I have a presentation today
I'll introduce myself in just a second it's a little long so I'll try to go through it
quickly so we can get plenty of time for Q&A I'd love to get to your you know what you
guys are concerned about so let me introduce myself I'm Tony Kimme I work with LGA engineering
I'm the project manager on the Denton County outer loop project of course what we're doing
is trying to clear that corridor schematically and environmentally so that the corridor can
be protected as we go forward I have Madeline Shepherd with me over here she's with one
of our partner firms and she's heading up all of the outreach associated with the project
public involvement everything else associated with that project so this is what we're going
to talk about today I don't want to go too deep into it other than just to say I'll try
to rush through this and just you know so that everybody understands where we've been
and where we're going so this shows our study area for the project you can see over there
on I-35 to the to the west and Dallas North Tollway to the east it's about 35 miles between
those two excuse me about 23 miles between those two and our study area goes all the
way up to 455 to the north and all the way down to loop 288 and 380 to the south.
This is part of our regional outer loop so this project will team up with other counties
in order to provide an outer loop for the region you can see the Denton County portion
there in green and then it continues through Collin County Rockwall County Kauffman County
and hopefully someday through Ellis County as well. One of the things that we just concluded
was our feasibility study we've been working on that a little over a year and through that
study and I'll get into more detail on that in just a second but through that we were
able to develop the purpose and need for this project so it's important to understand the
purpose and need it's the factual foundation to screen and compare design alternatives
and demonstrate through measurable and quantifiable metrics where improvements are needed. I don't
think there's any surprise to anybody that lives in Denton County that some of the things
that are driving the need for the project include things like rapid and current rapid
current and projected population and traffic growth. Also we've seen a lot of higher crash
rates on these roadways than you normally would see statewide from a statewide average
perspective and then you also have in this part of the county you have a really limited
mobility from an east-west contiguous east-west standpoint. FM428 of course exists out there
but it has its problems for sure and so those are the types of things that we look at when
we do our need for the project. The purpose of the proposed project within the project
limits is to address population and traffic growth of course and also to support a safe
and resilient east-west mobility and for east-west mobility and connectivity. I'll break that
down a little bit more you know again this is just kind of rehashing what you already
know but the growth between 2010 and 2020 the the county grew by almost 40 percent and
we see that growth continuing and right now the projections are that the county will be
north of 1.5 million people by 2045. You can see in the middle there where we're talking
about the crash rates that that top portion in the middle there that is what we call a
crash heat map. It shows you where we have accidents of varying different types through
the corridor you can see again if it's showing in a red color that means it's higher than
a statewide average for those type of roadways and you can see there in the Denton area of
course we have some issues associated with transportation and also in the Aubrey area.
And then also we went ahead and took some of the traffic projections that the North
Central Council of Government provides us and we applied them to the current system
down there on the bottom you can see a lot of red and that just means that those existing
systems will fail as the population continues to grow and also the traffic continues to
grow and then I'm just demonstrating on the far right the connectivity issues that we
talked about as far as east west movement. Guess what guys land is being developed quickly
so between 2015 and 2021 more than 20,000 acres were developed in Denton County and
just for our project limits within the study area we have at least 5,000 acres of additional
land that are you know within the study area that are planned for development and then
we call this our land development heat map so depending on the color the closer it gets
to red means it's closer to actually go into construction. Just to let you know there have
been various background studies we've incorporated all that information into our feasibility
study probably the most recent one they concluded in 2019 was by North Central Texas Council
of Governments called the Denton Greenbelt Corridor Feasibility Study they did determine
that a freeway was needed they actually came up with a couple of alignments we study those
alignments and incorporate them into our feasibility studies we went forward. So where are we at
now right we've concluded that and now we're moving into the environmental impact study
phase so with that environmental impact study it requires us to conduct more in-depth environmental
studies and we've been able to so far and also to develop schematic design for various
alternatives and we're going to go over those in just a second here. Okay so an environmental
impact statement I won't read all of this things but there are a couple of important
parts to know about that first off an environmental impact statement is required by the National
Environmental Policy Act or NEPA that's by the way one of the acronyms that John had
on his little cheat sheet there. It requires federal agencies to assess environmental effects
of their proposed actions prior to making decisions if the project is to receive federal
funding it must adhere to NEPA and of course something this large you want federal funding
to be involved. By the way the environmental impact statement or the EIS is the most rigorous
level of environmental review under NEPA and is prepared when it's anticipated that the
project could significantly affect the quality of human and natural environment. Let's see
if there's anything else I want to cover on this. Denton County intends to obtain the
environmental clearance for the project from TxDOT through the NEPA process so that federal
funds can be applied and also we want to do that as quickly as possible so that the corridor
can be protected from future development and then you know based on NEPA process TxDOT
determined that the project will now be classified or how it will now be classified and prepared
as an EIS that will evaluate a range of build and no build alternatives. So this breaks
down the EIS phase a little bit more and it's important to know the feasibility phase far
left is we've already concluded and the EIS phase just started and we're starting that
with scoping meetings both agency scoping meetings and public scoping meetings. We had
our first agency scoping meeting we had about three weeks ago that's with all the resource
agencies associated think of like the Corps of Engineers, Texas Parks and Wildlife those
types of folks and we had our first public scoping meeting last night and we're having
our second one in the series tonight here in Denton. We had about 260 folks show up
last night so it was really good to see them and we've had other public meetings so a lot
of them were familiar faces. Excuse me where did you have that meeting last night? We had
this one in Pilot Point at Midway Church. Tonight it's at NBC Suites. Right thank you
John. We also had to issue a notice of intent this goes into the Federal Register we did
that what thank you September 27th. That is significant first it really alerts everybody
in the country that this project is going to an EIS but it also sets us on a two year
clock so we have two years to conclude the EIS process. The next phase that we go into
is what we call analysis and public meeting that's where we're going to analyze alternatives
and carry those forward we're going to go much deeper into those which means we're going
to develop more schematic designs we're also going to host additional public meetings.
The next big significant one after that and this is important is that we go into what
we call the draft EIS and the public hearing. So we go into this pub that's around a public
meetings and we will have various alternatives that we've evaluated and we'll present that
to the public and those will be fully evaluated and you'll see some of the details on that
in just a minute but when we get to this public hearing right before that we have to submit
the draft EIS and in that document it will identify the preferred alternative and that's
what everybody's waiting for right so. Who are you submitting that to? So we submit that
document to TxDOT through their environmental folks and then that goes through an entire
process it's not just TxDOT it also goes to a lot of federal resource agencies and also
state resource agencies as well but one thing I want to let you all know is that we will
host a meeting with elected officials and we do this in a special way so that we're
not creating a quorum problem or anything like that but we will conduct these meetings
right before we publish the draft EIS so that the public you know the elected officials
know about what and it's usually like right before that I mean it's a day or two before
we actually submit the draft EIS. At that public hearing we will go over that preferred
alternative we will receive comments we'll process those and then we're basically rolling
towards the final EIS and we'll look over some schedules here in just a second but this
gives you an idea of just kind of the process that we're in right now. Just as a reminder
the feasibility study started out with 48 different alternative alignments so we started
kind of from ground zero even though we did incorporate previous studies we wanted to
look at everything and some of this was based on feedback that we had seen in the previous
studies and we wanted to make sure that we put those to rest in this process and during
our public meeting number one in May we actually showed that process how we went from those
48 down to the seven that you see there on the bottom of the slide and then eventually
we had a meeting this past November where we basically resolved those seven down to
these two most feasible alternatives going forward. We refer to those as the red and
blue alignments not alternatives but alignments there's nothing political in the colors that
we chose on that I just want everybody to know at this point in time anyway that was
a weak attempt at a joke. We got it and we all laughed. That'll be really fun next Wednesday.
Right I guess you know depending on your point of view right so now we're going to talk about
alternatives right so before I talked about alignments now we're talking about alternatives
so then county and textile must identify an alternative that would best accomplish the
purpose and need the build alternative segments shown on the next slide are based on the data
collected during the feasibility study and all the process and we've done up to this
point combinations of these segments make up for end to end build alternatives to be
evaluated by the process. One of the things that's important to know is that when we do
an EIS we have to have at least two build alternatives go through the entire process
and then we also have to have the no build alternative and that's the next bullet. Evaluation
of the no build would look at the impact of what will happen if no freeway is built but
projected population and traffic continue to grow it will also account for other roadway
improvements in the study area so basically any roadway that you have in your thoroughfare
plan or any other city that we're going through within the study area those roadways will
be assumed as being fully built let's say by 2045 or 2050 also improvements to FM 428
which is the best east west corridor that we have in this part of the county will also
be expanded to at least a six lane arterial as part of that no build analysis and then
you know there will be modifications as we go forward there'll be some tweaking to what
you've seen already on the screen. So how do we come up with four we divided the project
into the west sub area the central sub area and the east sub area and the central sub
area is dominated by the green belt that runs between the two lakes. Highly sensitive environmentally
there's a bunch of stuff we'll go over in a minute but there's a lot of stuff that really
dictated that the all the alignments needed to run on the existing FM 428 alignment through
that area. So what you see is then the west segment has kind of an A and a B you see some
A1's B1's and B2's and that kind of stuff those are just some other alternatives that
we're studying those will be hopefully eliminated here in the next few months as we go in and
do what we call a micro study of those particular areas and then of course you see D and E there
on the east sub area. So these four alternatives so the good news is that we kept kind of the
red and the blue we kept those colors consistent with what you had seen before on the previous
slide right. So we call it now a red alternative ACD that just means segment number by you
know left middle right. So everything you see on the red is basically a red alignment
you had seen before but now it's called the red alternative. The blue you know subsequently
is the same thing blue alternative equals the blue alignment. The purple is basically
red to the west and blue to the east and the gold is blue to the west and red to the east.
So those are the four alternatives that we're carrying through the EIS process. There's
a lot of stuff that we have to study I don't want to go over all of this. This is just
highly detailed. We are in the middle right now of out we're out in the field right now
and you may be hearing from some of your constituents you may even been you know I don't know where
everybody lives but you may have heard from some of your constituents we've gone out and
done what we call a right of entry process where we've requested entry into property
so that we can go out and do all this environmental study in the field you know and determine
what kind of impacts this project can have to the environment. And you can see just how
many different elements we have to address as part of this process. So we will also do
more detailed design on those four alternatives including things like right away typical sections,
ramp locations and interchanges, the constructability, cost, drainage, all of those things bike and
pet are all included in the analysis that we've been doing for the schematic design.
Gives you a typical section here this is ideally we have a 500 foot right of way. This matches
up with the other outer loops that are proceeding along in other counties. You can see it's
full frontage road continuous frontage roads on the outside those two lanes you see on
the outside and then right now the feasibility is indicating that we probably need to have
a six lane freeway running through the middle over time not day one but over time as things
develop out there we'll need to include those main lanes at some point in time. You'll have
you know interchanges every so often just like you're used to ramping that goes you
know through all this just like you would any other kind of freeway section and of course
we are including shared use paths on both side of the project and we don't see this
happening like I said overnight so there is a phasing that we are you know guessing will
happen on this project at least that's what the traffic numbers are projecting so we start
out with one frontage road make it two lanes but two way build the other frontage road
make them both one way and then come in and build the main lanes after that. This is that
critical area I was telling you about at the greenbelt there's just about it I don't know
I guess it's missing a kitchen sink but everything else is in this area we have in yellow is
federal federal conservation easements highly protected land through that process we have
core owned land and kind of the red color you see there we have the historic bridge
that's out there along FM 428 we have Ray Roberts late state park greenbelt trails which
is considered a park and we also have a core flowage easement there on the left in that
kind of cyan color and we also have regulatory floodways and other floodplains we have to
deal so right now the existing right of way through this area varies but minimally it's
a hundred and forty five feet and you're going to see a typical section here that try to
you know seize what we see how we can accommodate this freeway through that area so this shows
you what we call we have two options here that's called the stacked and the compressed
options to get across the M fork so the typical section I showed you before is kind of everywhere
outside of this area but for this three to five thousand feet across the M fork we're
looking at two different options the one on the top is a stacked option it puts the front
edge roads on the bottom and the main lanes on the top parallel to each other running
into the page the idea there is that it tries to stay within the textile right away and
we are really working hard to have zero impact to those conservation easements we might impact
some core owned land but right now we're anticipating no impact to the conservation easements this
requires us to relocate the historic bridge probably to the north on core owned land through
that area and reconnected to the trail system as part of that project the compressed option
is basically the same thing you saw before where we're keeping the main lanes and the
median between the main lanes basically the same but we're pushing in the frontage roads
making it tighter in between those so that we can go from you know like a 500 foot right
away to a 385 foot right away the good news on that one is that we're able to keep the
bridge at its current location this just shows you what some of the interchanges that we're
proposing on the project so the you know these will be grade separations where the main lane
goes over or under the cross street they'll be fully ramp served of course we'll have
multi-level interchanges along at 35 and also at the Dallas North Tollway we also have two
other very significant corridors us 377 and then also we're 428 branches off and runs
in a southwest direction towards loop 288 that's also going to be a very very important
interchange for the region this shows you the entire project development process the dark
blue we've already done the green is where we're at then next is the pre-construction
that's where you get into final design John has already covered a lot of that's where
we do final design and then we go into construction the corridor preservation though process has
already started and what we want to be sure that we're doing is we're not blocking the
corridor with development so we're communicating a lot with the cities we're communicating
a lot with developers in order to try to you know stave off anything like that that may
take place we also have a regional land banking opportunity if we need to where we may be
able to purchase some of the land to prevent it from you know becoming homes that would
be impacted by the corridor this just shows you kind of a more detailed schedule we've
already kind of gone through some of this thing you know right there in the middle is
where we're at and then our next round of meetings will be probably late summer of 2025
and those public meetings I described and then we'll have the public hearing either
late 2025 or early 2026 that's where the identified preferred alternative will be provided and
then we have about you know just depends anywhere from four to six months to get the final EIS
and record decision which should be done by mid 2026 so I invite everybody to join us
tonight at 530 if you want to you'll you'll hear some of this but you'll also get to look
at the maps in more detail all of this is available on Denton County outer loop.com
including this presentation and everything else and then of course you know so you can
also watch tonight I mean you can also participate virtually as well so a lot of opportunities
to participate and now let's go to questions because I know that's where you guys want
to get.
Thank you so I'll pick up the question that John punted earlier and for the Mile and Rector
alignments do we know that where the there's multiple stakeholders out there for the rodeo
and the gateway projects coming into Denton you've got the two different alignments and
it impacts what John talked about depending on how we do these alignments and exactly
where the county properties and the rodeo properties are going to go do we have any
clarity on any of that?
So we've been doing a lot of coordination with the county on that so we are aware of
the properties to the west and everything that's you know attempted to be done on that
I think we've been in really close coordination on that front right now we're trying to do
something so that the I-35 plans can accommodate what we envision in this area I mean everything
on the on the west side that the county only I would say is very very preliminary right
now but it is an economic development opportunity so it's important that we incorporate that
into our study you know this isn't all about just the natural environment it's also about
the human environment as well right so we want to make sure that we are advancing the
you know economics in the area as much as we can as well so I feel and John you can
you can step in here but I feel very comfortable that we're highly coordinated in that area.
So you can imagine Judge Eads has had us in his office multiple times on this but originally
this is the Milam Road on the west side and this is the Milam Road on the north side we
were trying to trying to find a way to get to this roadway because it continues on past
to 156 but the county is subsequently bought both land north and south of the Milam Road
on the on the west side and so basically if you just kind of look at lay out the property
not what they're going to do with it but just the property itself there's a property line
right here with the land to the north and the county to the south so we're we're looking
at being able to hit where Tech Start originally planned on having the box for the outer loop
because this project was cleared before this project did so they had to assume the outer
loop would be at the east side where Milam Road hits.
We did look at coming down and tying into the Milam Road here states that they would
agree to extend that bridge another thousand fifteen hundred feet so we'd have this big
huge under structure so we could hit where we need but once the county started buying
land in the north it made it look like it's best to come at it at what was originally
proposed and then come across and get back down to Milam Road on their development side
and that reduces that thousand feet where we need probably 300 300 so it reduces the
cost on the 35 jobs we keep it so we really are pushing from a locally preferred alternative
for the county and which is consistent with your third floor plan to have it hit Milam
Road on the east side 35 at that location okay go straight across John are they still
trying to let in April I'm sorry can I don't have to sell that again do I yes oh do I oh
yes I do oh my okay so short version is the county's development on the west side as far
as we know there's a property line that's adjacent to or contiguous with the the Milam
on the east side so we're going to put we're recommending that a alternative be included
which was what's on your third floor plan and what the county wants for their development
and then we'll tie into Milam on the east side and that reduces the cost of the bridge
structure at that location and takes us so they agree to that additional cost so the
last question on this before I go to my other questions and that is it's sounding like y'all
are focusing on Milam rather than Rector in terms of the the big alignment so when you
say focus we aren't like Tony said we're carrying both of these alignments through the entire
lifecycle of the CIS but we also have to if we're going to if mom's going to be an option
we had to pick which Milan we were going to do so so you'll see there's other areas where
there's some tweaking that we do over you know east of Aubrey and those are those are
get played out for the both the red and the blue alternatives going through that long
list of things that Tony showed you so there are two major alternatives with subset tweaks
that you could put on either side okay and he didn't say it the reason we're going across
in that one location across the green belt is he won't say it but I'm saying that the
Corps told us if we go anywhere other than 428 it'll cost us dearly and which is already
too expensive and nobody wants us to impact the green belt anyway so we're going where
they tell us so so you'll see some of those alignments earlier went up on the bridge on
the dam a 455 with courses you're not going to go on my damn damn and and we had to go
at 428 so that's why they tweak down the middle have you been to the damn store following
up on on on this damn conversation no for quarter C there that you know since you live
there I know that there's I got just a couple questions in this area I know that you you
sort of led with there's a lot of development in even even within quarter C on the on the
peripheries of the even though most of it is core land and and conservation land and
I know one of the the new players in that would is that Texas Parks and Wildlife is
thinking about millennial fund acquisition there and that was submitted by Senator Parker
as a project and so I'm curious how all these stakeholders if everybody is doing an EIS
or an EIS equivalent study how do you reconcile the outer loops EIS with the Texas Parks and
Wildlife's EIS with the with the developer you know NPCs EIS is that they are all doing
because they're they all want quarter C and they're all going to write an EIS that puts
them in the best light let's be honest so how do we reconcile because there's only one
environment and they're all putting conflicting demands on that so one of the things that
we did on this project was that we requested and received approval of to incorporate the
Corps of Engineers as a cooperating agency so that means that they're actually going
step-by-step with us through this entire project which is a different level than a participating
agency so most of the other agencies will be participating that just means they'll review
our documents and approve them accordingly we did also request that Texas Parks and Wildlife
be one of those cooperating agencies just for the reasons you described they they declined
that they just feel like they have enough MOUs with text dot or memorandums of understanding
with text dot in order to go through this process but they're definitely one of the
agencies that we are coordinating with all the time and then the other one that did also
move up into a cooperating agency is a Texas Historic Commission because of the historic
bridge in this area so there is a lot going on in this area and that's that's what Madeline
and I work on a lot I mean we these public meetings are also very helpful we gain a lot
of information from that but we're also working with your staff also to learn about these
types of things that are going on and and every time we have a meeting we always learn
something new and we're just incorporating those the best we can but it will be the responsibility
of these agencies that are participating with us for them to alert us to the same thing
you know things you just described you know how are we going to keep from doing this and
then go uh-oh we completely forgot about or we completely missed this thing over here
and you know that's it's just part of the process that we we count on that to happen
okay well what I'm going to do is you're done thank you very much I am going to ask if there's
anyone else that has any questions in this regard we'll keep it nice and tight because
we're watching our time I'll just say that we were under time on the last item so if
we could get a little extra time here madam chair for the reminder my first question is
just what's the deadline for comments on this November 29th yeah November 29th is the deadline
for the scoping meetings that we're currently in all right excellent thank you um my second
is more of a comment just so I'm looking at this and it says between 2015 and 2021 more
than 20,000 acres of land were already developed in Denton County and there's the map with
all of these parcels of land here I gotta say I'm really preferential to the no build
option here because you know looking at all of this land that's being urbanized we know
that there's you know a ton of environmental value to not urbanizing all of your you know
rural areas looking at like California where they're getting struck with massive wildfires
and whatnot and I'm looking forward at our next presentation which has some statistics
Denton's smog is now approaching the severe category twice the rate of lung disease in
children I just have to say that for all that my opinion is worth which I know is not much
to tax dot I would be in favor of the no build option I think I need to point out a couple
of things is those that heat map you see those are people that have invested property rights
so that development is going to occur because a lot of it's unincorporated and the legislature
has not given the counties a much authority to handle unincorporated development and so
when we did our original study early on between 380 the outer road 377 and the toll road and
10 years will be 90,000 people living there without doing a single thing to this road
because our road won't be there so what we're suggesting to you is is that the way you reduce
that load because vehicles that travel at a efficient rate of speed emit less pollution
than those that run idle so what you want to do is reduce congestion as much as you
can and keep the traffic flowing so if you saw the other map where the roads are red
without the outer loop all those roads will go underwater and those people will be congested
on streets that weren't meant for them to be there so we get this we understand but
that's why we chose we suggested to the state and they agreed that we're doing this document
at the highest level of environmental clearance possible which also includes since we're in
a non-attainment area conformity issues that we have to deal with so that what we do has
to reduce the overall pollution in the region not increase it and I'm just immensely skeptical
of that I think you know that would have been the logic for why 635 was built earlier or
all of these other loop roads that we can see across the county that then in 20 years
do become congested themselves and you know kind of incent development around them and
then you know the second the second point I want to make to you is I've been around
for 30 plus years and what got me into this business was in 1988 when Denton County was
brought in to the non-attainment scenario and I've been I've been tracking this and
because it impacts transportation for that 30 years in 20 it was 1996 the first air quality
standard was 12 parts per billion we're at like seven right now so we're going down in
a total amount of pollution but we're not getting there fast enough and that's why you
go from moderate to severe to extreme not because the air is getting dirtier it's because
you're not getting there fast enough so I'll get you some information but what the regions
do it is pretty impressive.
Anyone else?
Oh I'm sorry.
I'm done.
Okay.
Anything?
Yes.
I have a question about the the reason for the road so one of them was that the crash
rates in the region I believe are higher than the statewide average can you explain how
adding another high-speed road will reduce crashes?
Yeah actually you know so the one of the safest facilities that we have for carrying traffic
is a freeway mainly because you how you handle crossing traffic and everything else right
we don't allow people to cross the roadways so you are going over or under those cross
streets through ramping and everything else and so that just generally creates a safer
system now it's higher speed and so you know you definitely have to worry about the severity
of those elements as you go up when you see the our alignments you'll notice that horizontally
they're kind of what I call lazy alignments the curves are really long and those kind
of things that's another element that we try to do in order to increase the safety of those
roadways but yes I mean generally the at-grade intersection is the one of the biggest problem
areas that we have as far as crashes and I'll yeah I'll go ahead and I think did
that answer your question I'm sorry yeah and I'll follow up a little so I-35 is on that
heat map there that is a limited access freeway so how will this one be different because
I know I-35 is one of our top locations of deaths also in traffic crashes in Denton the
other one is 35 or sorry not 35 380 which of course is you know at great and all that
and so how will this be different than 35 so any facility that you over you know over
use or you put too much load on it it will then its safety will go down its its crashes
will increase over that time frame so right now John just described earlier about the
reconstruction that will take place to the 35 corridor safety is part of that but more
you know it's a congestion deal I guess what I'm trying to say so when you have a free
flow situation you wouldn't have a lot of these type of incidents as you see I mean
even driving up here from Flower Mound to come to this meeting today you know there
were several times where we were slowing down mainly due to congestion and you know I don't
really feel like we were traveling during the peak hours at all so 35 is definitely
stressed it's probably one of the most stress corridors we have in the region and that stress
creates crashes right and so building off that a little bit and sort of building off
what a committee member Bray said so so we anticipate development coming in along this
new roadway and some of its already planned right folks are planning on it so do we anticipate
that building this roadway will increase the speed or the likelihood those developments
come online or in other words if we if we didn't build it would would those things come
online a little slower because you know maybe they're like oh people won't want to move
out there because it takes too long to get places right so two things what we noticed
region-wide is is after COVID you had this diaspora from the center right people they're
going out they're going further away telecommuting is helping that and in the 2050 mobility all
the perimeter counties around Dallas and Tarrant County are significantly increasing in population
right now we're at a little over a million and Collin County is a little bit more than
that by 2050 without if you take out the outer loop the only thing happens is the congestion
gets worse if the outer loops there it reduces the congestion but by 2050 we're going to
outstrip Collin County and population and primarily because we have the two interstates
35 E&W coming right through the heart of our county so the growth is coming regardless
of what you do if we don't build the roads are you going to do is end up ruining quality
alive I'm so maybe I don't have a continued question based on that but I guess my concern
is that we'll build the roadway and it will become over capacity again because of all
of the development that will come online and then we'll feel like we're at square one again
to some degree so I guess that's just a concern that maybe doesn't have an answer but it kind
of does I mean there's there's things that we try to do so you know we talked about the
500 foot corridor on that deal so that's a pretty healthy right away section you'll notice
in this section that we have a fairly large gap between the main lanes in each direction
and that's so that we can expand the facility as we need to you know we don't know we can
project traffic based on everything we understand today and we've done a pretty decent job of
that particularly in this region over the years but you know we have things that are
coming online with automated vehicles electric vehicles and other types of things they're
a little more less certain about what we're going to do so we didn't want to sit there
and remove this space in the middle so that we just had that flexibility to flex with
what might happen in in that you know as as as this region grows and what traffic becomes
as more innovation and automation takes place so right now we're just trying to build in
additional capacity to the system so one of the things I wanted to point out real quick
because I know we're over time but this is a 23 mile long dam in this area so what we're
also doing is partnering with the Corps of Engineers on what's called a transportation
stormwater initiative where we're going to take the outer loop and and construct it or
allow it to be developed in a way where we go further up the the waterways that we impact
look at taking more of that property in as a floodplain and then impounding the water
whether it's detention retention have an aesthetic look to it but then take that water and find
best management practices to recharge the aquifer instead of the just let it floated
because they don't want it to go on through Dallas down the Trinity River so they wanted
us to just detain detain it and make it go slower and the county says look if we're going
to put land under water we're going to use it to recharge aquifer so there's a whole
lot of environmental issues that we're going to be addressing with this road not just not
just the traveling public okay thank you thank you thank you we have just the weird we're
out of time council member Joe Holland wanted to ask a question are y'all gonna be around
no no no i'm gonna i want to wait in interest of time if you're gonna be around you're gonna
be around okay all right thank you all for being around so Joe can get his question answered
but we are definitely going to move forward i had a question but i'm just gonna i'll wait
around and ask that question later okay so we're going to move on to mc-24-036 receive
a report and hold a discussion regarding lowering barriers to bike racks with a focus on infield
locations this is going to be good bike racks exciting biking cycling cycling and biking
the same thing cycling cycling and biking is that the same thing biking involves a motorcycle
oh my yeah that's why i kind of stay with cycling i didn't even know bicycling oh bicycling
well yeah that's okay or tricycle yeah anyway okay great scott okay transportation services
city of denton also as i introduced myself before yeah a person that has lived many places
some of which chased after the car some of which did not chase after the car and you
know what the quality of life was better than the ones that didn't chase after the car okay
okay the city does a great job with requiring bike racks on new development that's why we're
focusing on infield development because that is the more difficult thing to do i'm going
to kind of recap first on a june presentation that i gave with some recommendations take
a little deeper look at two of those aspects talk about strategy and some more specific
recommendations open it up for q a as far as connection to city goals and strategies
probably the most one that i enjoy is strategy 8.17 in the mobility commit our mobility plan
provide bike parking at public facilities as you know we all know biking have can have
big benefits also part of the recap is uh we recommended a pilot using these two techniques
that are presented in june and you will recognize those and we are going to go deeper especially
into number one because that's the one we can do first another deeper look is air quality
dentin as part of the dfw region now has uh severe smog air quality that is the main issue
that the region is dealing with that means damaged lungs which are prone to infection
aggravated disease such as asthma as uh christine bray indicated our children have twice the
lung disease as people outside of the rest of the nation that's from the cog air quality
report all those things and our federal funding is threatened in 27 if we don't correct the
situation or have a path to that and are those folks that come in that want to come in they
want their employees to be healthy and they want to be proud of it just like freight manufacturer
sorry it's escaping me peter built peter built so they brag that they're an environmental
leader okay it's important to them um our task is to eliminate cold starts what is a
cold start a cold start is when you start your car the 60 seconds between if you drive
a standard car six within turning that ignition and about 60 seconds on a typical trip 95%
of the pollutants that cause smog our main issue will be emitted in those 60 seconds
until your catalytic converter warms up so that curve over there there's four types of
vehicles most are zero and one there's some of the others out there too yeah you can see
the curve the the y-axis is your is the emissions that cause smog the bottom is the seconds
that the vehicles ran if it had been set for a while right repeated starts don't do the
same thing okay so reducing auto idling does not do a lot in that situation but if you
can get the person to bike walk they have a zero emission vehicle that's your ticket
no cold starts okay so by my point is biking has outside benefits outsized benefits because
it eliminates that okay and you add to that if we could make this happen in your let's
imagine 20 if if 28% of all trips they're less than one mile less than about 60 seconds
or whatever if that could happen that'd be a great great start if they could bike or
walk and then six fifty two percent that's that's even better that would be great it
may not happen that we they actually can get them bike and walk but we've got to give them
the facilities to do it okay whoops no I am okay so these are pictures from my hometown
where we talked about a pilot and that we were wanted to use unutilized space these
are pictures of how they use that unutilized space and here's a little graphic that kind
of shows that at corners you'll notice in a lot of places they've painted the curb red
because they don't want people to park there right because this blue vehicle needs to be
able to see the white vehicle that's coming so they got to have the corner clear for vision
well if you put bike racks in there they do not obstruct that vision they're good they're
low profile enough they're they're transparent enough okay so they said hey that is space
for us and that's what they did and we could do the same thing so I got a strategy over
here and we'll go through them pretty quickly because I've taken a lot of time but I think
you'll get more out of looking at the specific recommendation this being probably the primary
one because it is the first so the recommendation is to do a big jump focusing a lot of improvements
in a small area and I can't think of one that's better than the area around the the square
because we don't want people biking on the sidewalks and the square we don't allow that
so let's focus on that area is the thought okay and so we can use you'll recognize this
picture from the last meeting these are little sleds wood whatever we could do this even
temporary right painted that area put the sleds in or we could do a permanent you know
depends on your feelings and what the initial community intake would be but put them out
there show that it can be piloted show that it can be done after that and that could take
a while so we can go into way more detail and these other steps of the strategy but
ultimately we've got to simplify this so that people can do infill bike racks and we need
to not only permit it but condense it down to something that's really digestible digestible
means financial no no it means so that a person reading it can be like in a brochure format
so they can understand it and say yeah that's how I do it not plan planner or engineer lingo
right then you bring you know like like the Chamber of Commerce in others too and you
praise them you know we've talked about bike friendly designations so together starting
with this I think we're be well on our way to to making to eliminating the barriers is
that the presentation that is it well thank you so much that was a very informative very
interesting presentation thank you I'm going to take the privilege of saying something
first get my time in let's go back to the the front part of that I want to see your
your hometown that hometown picture that right there I'm really really into this because
I think that I would I would approve something like this for us to to try I think it's very
interesting and again I've just come from Denver mm-hmm and I was really studying those
streets this time like really getting into it and I saw some of some of this going on
in their downtown area where they were taking that very seriously they were doing that construction
work to push those to push this type of thing and I thought it was interesting to see would
the would you can you envision where the bike racks are located would the street be painted
I mean would it be something that yeah very significant yeah one of the principles yes
so okay good because I don't see that on there I see the street oh and we still have ballots
at the top to the left no no I'm over here on the other pictures oh yeah it's mostly
white yeah you know I propose something I would propose something a little better than
that that one's you know got sons possessed but I was just you know kind of thinking maybe
it could be stand out with some type of color on the street now what about motorcycles I
mean our motorcycles start towards the end of the street along with the bikes on they
certainly could be but I don't think I think the needs are more for I mean bike racks aren't
something motorcycles use they need the space granted alright those are the only two questions
that I have let's start with this brain first I love this appreciate it thank you one one
concern that I keep coming back to which kind of interacts with this and a way that people
are just violating the law they're using these corner spaces that aren't you know they're
marked off as don't park here but they get used as pick up spaces for like Uber Eats
or stuff so obviously that you know that it's against the law but I just want to echo my
previous comments on we should do something about parking and loading for for these types
of things also I think there's opportunities outside of our kind of traditional walkable
areas like fry Street is obviously a good fit for this that I'd like to see pursued
in the future I go to that queue up on up by by Bonnie Bray in 380 and I just bring
my bike into their you know their lobby because I'm like there's there's no parking here so
I think that there's other typologies of like areas that could use this where there's there's
not actually street parking near that DAC you to take for this purpose so just just
something that you know like I said very excited about this but other things in the future
as well and then to my council members you know roads are very expensive this is very
cheap we could we could allocate some funding to this all right thank you.
You know yeah on bridging with that the taking a look at these parking lots and making sure
that whenever we in the future when we're building out additional what are those store
fronts at least for sure having spaces for bikes like like they do motorcycles have little
motorcycle spaces but it'd be need to have a real genuine set of parking spaces for bikes
so we won't have to take our bikes inside of the facilities to keep them from you know
being taken or whatever thank you thank you for that yes ma'am thank you chair thank you
for this presentation Greg appreciate it I have three comments and a question the first
comment is I would definitely like to see us purchase you know just a handful maybe
of the mobile racks but more the style of the one in front of harvest house is more
of the inverted you or staple rack as opposed to the wave racks we saw in the photo but
we do have a really great example of something like this in front of harvest house for anybody
that wants to go look at it my other comment is sort of echoing what council member committee
member Bray said of you know also trying to look at how we can provide opportunities
for businesses especially in strip malls is where I have the biggest problem of not finding
anything to lock to so seeing if we can look into places like that and how we can increase
bike parking at existing buildings right and I would also urge us to look at the square
proper yes you can't bike on the on the sidewalks but I can't remember which corners have bike
parking in which don't and it has slowly disappeared over time because they've you know reconstructed
some of the corners and I'm not talking about the hallway crossing before that we reconstructed
some of the brick looking things and didn't put the bike racks back I've noticed some
bike parking next to rusty taco has disappeared now so it is slowly disappearing and I struggle
to remember like where the bike parking is on the square so I would definitely encourage
us to also look at bike parking on the square itself as well as outside of the square because
I do kind of struggle to find bike parking outside of the square and then my third comment
is yes I definitely support on the bike parking standards the written stuff having clear standards
for bike parking so we we kind of describe it but we don't have any pictures and I feel
like I'm seeing with new developments that maybe people aren't understanding what it's
supposed to look like so if we can have some illustrations included I think that might
help a little bit I mean I've even seen the city put in the wrong kind of bike rack that
goes against what our standards say so I think having photos might help especially for people
who are less familiar with these kinds of things and I really like the idea of the brochure
style instructions so I mean kind of like we did with our development code in 2019 adding
more visuals to make it easier to understand more digestible as you said and then my question
is this is probably for future answering not right now but I'm curious what resources staff
think we would need to implement a pilot project that includes something like purchasing a
collection of you know maybe staple racks maybe some of those cycle hoops that you've
given us for the more urbanized areas like the fry street area things like that but also
some staple racks for those strip malls and then allowing businesses especially small
businesses to request we install one and then since we're the sense of city's doing it
hopefully it gets installed correctly with the right kind of rack that way businesses
existing businesses could opt in not be forced so that's just something I would like for
us to look at in the future maybe not to answer right now that's all I have I just want to
make a comment about this I you know the reason the reason we have bike racks is to store
one's bike and prevent theft right because if it wasn't for the theft aspect you could
lean your bike against the store window you get any of that yeah also to provide a designated
spot so it's not okay in the way okay my my concern is shown on slide three the bicycle
in the middle the u-lock is holding the frame okay and the rear wheel which admittedly are
the most expensive parts of the bike but the front wheel is left vulnerable and that concerns
me because now you return to your bike and your front wheel has been stolen now the the
second slide the third slide there that bike is completely protected the front wheel the
frame and the rear wheel are all tied up with either a u-lock or a cable there's nothing
to steal on that so so I think I think when we and and the example the and I like the
I like the concept the the portable thing on slide seven that's that's not given that's
not given theft much of a nod and it's a shame that we have to consider that but but stealing
parts off of a bike is is almost as bad as stealing the bike it renders it useless now
instead of riding home you're gonna have to carry it home I just want to just want to
mention that something something that could be done that would be easy to to secure the
three the three most important segments of the bike yeah you will notice that I didn't
spend a lot of time on the circle lock or whatever cycle hoop because that might take
some doings especially working with DME or you know whoever to be able to do that but
I think that the quickest and easiest thing is to focus on this yeah that that's a that's
a fine that's a fine setup if it's if you're gonna go into a store and come back quickly
right but if you're gonna go to the mall as you point out you know your bike is gonna
be a bicycle your bicycle is going to be at one end of the mall and you're gonna be way
over here that gives the bad guy plenty of time to steal whatever is vulnerable you've
noticed to wheels left on bike racks yeah it's not the wheel that was locked it was
the rest of the bike that wasn't right yeah that's all and this is a bike I know coming
from a bike uh yes sir briefly I'm just gonna I want to reiterate what you're hearing is
a lot of interest in and support you've got a cyclist the cyclist the cyclist the cyclist
want to be so that's not surprising and I I just don't know chairs predilection for
cycling I know how to ride a bike maybe it's unanimous I know how to ride a bike for predilection
predilection predilection wow what did I just say no I'm just impressed so one of the things
I wanted I had two quick questions one was sort of a piggybacking off what Commissioner
Rumer said and that was are there it seems like and I think Councillor Holland alluded
to it as well there there seems like there's opportunities for us to get buy-in for parking
at established businesses I think actually Councillor Bray's had a related Commissioner
Bray had a related so we keep wanting to let you to office for some reason similar thing
and opportunities to have buy-in from businesses if there was an if there was a mechanism whereby
you could get a grant if you were a low-income business you know small mom-pa or or if they
could purchase into our program and dedicate the exact same kind of rack that we're using
but funded by them for a larger company that would add consistency and and and some scale
efficiency yes so I encourage us to think about that and and that leads me to my second
question is and you heard about some destination pathing for this you know versus piloting
downtown do do we have a concept for how we want to roll out phase phases two through
whatever in terms of where would we go if this is wildly successful and you're hearing
a lot of positive energy about downtown where would we want to go next I can we'd have
to think about that more I do have ideas but I'm probably not well vetted I encourage us
to do you've heard a lot of retail interest and so I encourage us to do a lot of really
robust destination pathing so that you get to your slide one or whatever we were talking
about air quality and cold starts yeah if I can't go from grocery store X to downtown
Y then I'm not going to use my bike I'm gonna hop in my car yeah I think the the beauty
of the pilot is to show everybody what can be done and how they could do it themselves
to right generate excitement but also you have a living brochure but we got to do it
right but we or thread that needle between doing it perfect and doing it with the constraints
we have the staff time and finances and such but we think this is a way this is underutilized
space it's under our control not too hard well thank you very much for your thank you
very much for your your presentation I'm just very excited for us to see this to fruition
yeah however that comes about thank you a telephone number please really really I'll
give you mine I mean yeah five zero three we can provide that to you okay it's being
broadcast that's what everybody called thank you okay well we're gonna move on to EMC 24-037
we're gonna get in here and get it done good morning Trevor crane director of capital projects
so I'll go through just some of the staff memorandum we did provide some responses to
the questions we had last week so clarification of the 2019 Street reconstruction bond numbers
that came from a committee member Bray also provided a response to the quality control
and construction projects councilmember Beck I know this came from you if you had any further
questions on this I'd be happy to expand if you if you did or any councilor yes I didn't
know how you wanted to handle it oh yeah let's go I did and it's the same question I asked
earlier in text thought is I know y'all have been running all over town seeing you know
downtown text dot asphalt failures 2019 bond failures I've asked that in a previous staff
report we're seeing asphalt misbehaving in many of our projects and that's not on us
the city but it's now our responsibility to deal with brand new asphalt failures so what's
what's our path forward how are we handling this this QC problem sure so I'll say generally
you know we strive to try to catch those problems before the asphalt gets placed so that's you
know kind of what I go into here with our construction specs you know inspection all
those types of things I'll say recently you know a lot of these things can be placed on
you know poor workmanship by a contractor or those types of things but I'll say recently
probably within the last six months we've seen kind of across the board some asphalt
failures from you know all different types of contractors even some that we know are
you know are doing a phenomenal job so we are kind of going back to the plants looking
at kind of the mixes making sure that they're giving us what they're saying they're giving
us and not just counting on catching these things at the end and you know counting on
a contractor to come back and redo it so we do have a lot of things in place where we're
checking quality quality of control quality assurance but with the kind of recent things
we've seen with the asphalt kind of doing some extra extra work to try to figure out
what the root causes of that no I appreciate that because it costs us time and money as
the cities at the city level and it's also costing our residents time and money because
now they'll have to go back and re scrape and report and and and then every person in
this room hears about it. Sure. I would say you know we want to even though a lot of these
things or the majority of these things do cost the contractor and not us financially
but it does have those other ramifications we want to be good partners with our contractors
we don't want to let them put down asphalt that we know we're going to reject and so
that's why we're always trying to work with them making sure that they're giving us exactly
what we're looking for and that they're placing it placing it per our specs doing all the
testing and those types of things so thank you. I'm going to just put my little two cents
in here as you were speaking in talking about this as being something that's kind of relatively
you're starting to kind of put some patterns in here. You know this particular part of
the country might be preparing itself for our own little mini earthquake right now due
to a lot of fracking and everything that's going on for a number of years around here. So you
know as you all are just contemplating and trying to figure out what's going on generally
speaking you know add that to the mix as well. Yes ma'am. I tend to generally be you know
correct about a lot of things like that. It's handy. Okay. Okay. So temporary improvement
for McKinney sidewalks. Sure. So this was just an update. I know we talked about the
temporary improvements and whether there was a an appetite to go forward with some temporary
improvements while the permanent project was moving forward. So council did give us direction
to move forward with the permanent and not do any of the temporary. There were some constraints
for a temporary temporary solution but we can always go back and look at that if we
were to get that direction. And a question on that. I just it's my understanding that
council member Holland intends to pitch that. So I just wanted to thank him. And I imagine
one of the prior constraints might have been that we didn't have a pedestrian walkability
ADA coordinator. So got that one covered now. Thank you. So I will say the next item kind
of leads into this one. So if you want to give me a second now kind of talk through
this one. So we didn't want to give an update on the permanent McKinney sidewalk project.
So currently at 30 percent but due to some design challenges we've seen. So let me back
up. So one of the things when we passed this project was we didn't know how much right
of way we were going to need. Didn't know kind of the utilities that were out there.
So really wanted to move this project forward to 30 percent to understand you know what
the challenges would be to put in that permanent sidewalk at the right of way direction. So
we are 30 percent. We've done those surveys gathered a lot of information and we are seeing
some unforeseen obstacles. So we wanted to come back to mobility committee with a couple
of options to get some direction kind of see what y'all's appetite was for any of these
options. So option one would be to continue to design on the south side of McKinney. So
that's kind of where we've done our survey and where we're going to put that permanent
sidewalk in. This would involve acquiring all the right of way and relocating all the
utilities that are out there and in the way which could be a pretty time consuming process.
So typically right of way acquisition and utility relocation are the longest things
take the most time during construction or during design. So that is option one. We can
keep going get it all the way to 100 percent and move forward. Option two we can conduct
a feasibility study on the north side of the road. So that feasibility study is really
kind of the same thing we did on the south side. We would do some survey find out what
how much right of way we need to acquire what kind of utilities are in the way that would
cost about twenty five thousand dollars to do that feasibility study. The pros of that
is it could potentially be an easier route to put in but the cons is we spend another
twenty five thousand dollars and it may be we may be in the same boat that we are on
the south side lots of right of way and lots of utilities. So option three we have had
our consultant look at the existing right of way that we have out there. We believe
that we can complete a full sidewalk from Woodrow to loop 38 within our existing sidewalk
or within our existing right of way. It will not be at the ultimate right of way for if
we come back and do that roadway section. So some pieces of that would have to be removed
and replaced in the future when we come back and do the actual roadway reconstruction between
Woodrow and loop 28. But we believe that we can move forward with a sidewalk that would
connect all the way from Woodrow to loop 28 utilizing the existing existing sidewalks
that are out there. So really just filling in the gaps. The cons of this would be that
the sidewalk would be variable length or variable width. So some places it would be five feet
some places eight feet. We would install the wider sidewalk but some of the existing sidewalk
is a narrower sidewalk. Pros of this. We've already got existing structures out there.
So it's less costly. We would be within our own right of way. Don't have to buy any right
of way. Don't have to move any utilities. And we could do it pretty quickly. I say pretty
quickly. We would have our design consultant design just the connection pieces probably
three to six months and then be in construction relatively shortly after that. So those are
the three options that we're currently looking at now. Our recommendation would be to move
forward with option three especially you know knowing what we know now about the right of
way acquisition the utility coordination our relocation and knowing our what the the communication
that's happened you know recently about you know making sure that we get a viable walkway
all the way from Woodrow to loop 288. So that would be our our recommendation. And now I'm
open any questions or direction. All right. So this will this what I want to do because
I want to watch our time. I want you all to tell us which option and tell us one reason
why. Go ahead. Yeah. Favorite option three. I asked some people including the young person
who came to council at the previous meeting and spoke on it and they said they wanted
it done fast. My only concern would be if there's any crossings of the street that there
would be maybe like flashy signs and you know a nice crosswalk painted. Yeah. I favorite
option three. I'm with similar concerns. I minimize a number of street crossings and
things like that but sooner and dedicated is better than you know it's worth the extra
cost that we might incur in the future. All right. Well I'm going to say I favor option
one because I do understand that we're going to do something significant with that road
on down the line anyway. Not real sure of when that is going to occur. But I think that
if we were to do option one we're just simply preparing ourselves for a minimum amount that
we would need later on down the line. That's my preference. Yes sir. Option three because
it's a shorter construction timeline less expensive but I do have a question about that.
Which side is that. It would be on the south side. Okay. Okay. Option three. So I'm going
to throw a wrench in it. I'm going to go for option to assuming we're able to do some sort
of temporary measures in the meantime because between the loop and Ryan High School there's
already a 10 foot side path on the north side. So that would make that continuous reduce
unnecessary road crossings and overall and kind of like you said for option one create
something that will last a little longer than option three would and we make hopefully won't
interrupt it as much as option three. We've got three for three. One for one. So that's
where we're going to go. We're going to look at the recommendation. Perfect. Thank you.
Thank you. Okay. So the next one up is traffic calming measures. Did anyone have any additional
questions on this one? Oh the only question. Did you all have any questions? Yes we had
a question. Yeah I was curious if we could get a future presentation on this specifically.
We hear a lot. I mean I know y'all hear a lot of people complaining about speeding in
their neighborhoods and that kind of thing safety concerns. I'd be curious to hear from
staff what resources y'all would need staff wise like new staff what kind of budget might
be possible for a traffic calming program. I know there are other cities that do it and
they respond to concerns for about speeding or safety issues because as we read in this
report traffic calming is a much more effective 24 hours a day implementation versus just
occasional human enforcement. So I'd like to hear a future presentation on what that
would look like resource wise. Yes ma'am. I think we can add that to the future items
matrix. Yeah it's currently on there. So we were planning on bringing back several presentations
especially I want to make sure that we're reporting on our metrics as we're as we're
implementing these things and we're tracking them that we're reporting back to the committee.
So we will absolutely add that to the list. Thanks. All right. You have a question. Yeah
just since we're already planning that presentation if we could also think about how the public
will participate in sort of a request process you know engage dentin versus traffic mobility
or how will the public participate in your needs assessment. Yes sir. And then finally
down here was the trip. Oh wait a minute. Hold on. Hold on. I'm sorry. Did you finish.
That was a question that you want him to bring back. Yes. OK. Thank you. I thought I was
looking for a question. Also bring us back. I'm just curious. You can probably answer
this question right here. Working with developers and putting I'm talking about for businesses
and neighborhoods. Does traffic calming come up in any kind of way in any of those conversations
because it looks like we're chasing traffic calm. Sure. So I'll let Farhan answer that
question for home but deputy director transportation services division. So for that matter as well
we are looking into the process and and details how it would play out. And this will be included
as well in our next. So this is a future future conversation. Yes. OK. As I've been seeing
a lot of little roundabouts in different locations that I have been to more than Denver but other
places that I've seen where they're using a few more roundabouts in certain certain
places. Thank you very much. Looking forward to bringing that back. Trip fund usage. Sure.
So the last item was the trip from usage. So historically we have used our trip funds
and support existing projects that align with the program's goals and enhancing pedestrian
multimodal. Now that we have Farhan and his team transportation planning we are looking
at utilizing those trip funds and creating kind of standalone projects that meet those
requirements working with DCTA and creating specific projects to utilize those trip funds.
Any committee with a committee from some another trip fund type committee or something like
that. I don't believe so. You're doing anything like that. Yeah. And I don't mean this to
be harsh but this is real thin. It's a little bit of a non answer and I apologize for the
harshness of that response. But my question is could I get a crude answer is fine. But
could I get an assessment of sort of street versus bike pad versus mass transit levels
in our trip projects. Sure. Maybe for the last one or two cycles. Just because my sense
is we're spending a lot on streets and rather than mass transit and bike pad which I think
was more of the spirit of the trip funding. And if we're going to spend it on streets
I want us to do it intentionally out of our operational M&O budgets and bond budgets rather
than incidentally and accidentally out of our trip funding. Sure. So we can absolutely
provide that we have a report that we report back to DCTA on all of the projects we're
using trip funds for. I will say generally those you know I can think of specifically
on Bonnie Bray phase three the trip funding is allocated on that project but it's specifically
for pedestrian utilities, pedestrian facilities and those types of things. So we can absolutely
get you that information on where that trip funds have been allocated historically where
they're at. And then you know like I said as we move forward we'll be creating specific
projects for that trip funding. Awesome sauce thank you. Okay. Oh yes. But just to be clear
on that Bonnie Bray project those are facilities that are like streets policies would have
not required because they're our own policies but you know told us to build anyways right.
Correct. Anything else? Right that's it for me. Thank you. Thank you. Where is the little
part that always mess up? The future items matrix? Yes we have five minutes probably
less than five minutes. All right did anybody have any anything that they wanted to note
on this particular area? There's a lot here is there anything we need to take off? Sometimes
some of them are completed. We can leave the trip funding item on and follow up with your
to ensure that we follow up with your question. Okay. Anything else? Next meeting is the 20th.
Well I think we're just gonna leave this here. That looks like there's any questions comments
or concerns in this regard. Yes did you have to? No no I was pointing at Councilor Holland.
I was just asking the next meeting. Oh we'll get to that in just a second. For number three
yes. Let's get a question let's get an answer on number three. Let's ask a question please.
Oh I'm sorry oh concluding. Okay so concluding items that there's nothing else between we'll
move to concluding items. Thank you. My first comment is thanks to staff who put the mobility
plans goals and strategies on the presentations. I requested that a couple meetings and I appreciate
that that's been implemented. I have one request to I guess add to the matrix. So years ago
I met with staff including Sarah Hensley before she was our permanent city manager about issues
of construction signs blocking pedestrian rights of way when the sidewalk was not under
construction or otherwise blocked. And I feel like I've seen improvements over time that
I'm more frequently seeing the signs put in the grass nearby instead of the sidewalk or
a bike lane. But I am continuing to see where construction signs are being plopped in the
middle of a sidewalk on busy roads when there was space right next to the sidewalk to place
it. So I'm curious I don't know if this would be a presentation or what I'll let y'all
determine that to understand you know are there difficulties that I'm not seeing that's causing
that to happen or is there something else we can do to either prevent these signs from
being placed in sidewalks when there's space nearby or catching it quickly when they are
placed there. So two examples I did to discuss no Engage Denton reports or requests of two
blocking the sidewalk on Malone when there was space pretty close by. And then I saw
a detour sign maybe on McKinney Street in downtown. A detour sign blocking the sidewalk
there as well when there was space nearby. So something to continue improving on that
to prevent that from happening so people don't have to step in busy roadways to get around
them or if they're in a wheelchair good luck. That's all I had. Thanks. So that is what
the Mobility Committee is for and I noticed that but I didn't put two and two together
to make a statement about it but I am increasingly noticing that as well around town. Thank you.
I just want to acknowledge the huge success that the Halloween town events have been and
specific to this committee. It's wonderful to see all of these families and just huge
crowds of people having safe downtown spaces to walk around in and enjoy our city and so
I think that's been really wonderful to see over the last month. I am so proud of our
city. I really really am. So we did the future items. This gentleman wanted to know the next
meeting which just happens at the same November 27th November 27th is your date. It would
be the last Wednesday of the month at 10 o'clock ending at 12. Okay so if there's not anything
else I am going to conclude our meeting at 1157. Thank you all for a great job. City
of Denton people.