Mobility Committee Meeting Transcript – 2/3/2016 Title: ATXN 24/7 Recording Channel: 6 - ATXN Recorded On: 2/3/2016 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 2/3/2016 Transcript Generated by SnapStream ================================== [3:07:53 PM] >> Kitchen: Good afternoon, everyone. We're going to get started with our mobility committee meeting this afternoon. So I'm calling it to order. I think it's 3:07. So so the first item on our agenda is approval of the minutes. So we have a motion by councilmember Gallo, a second by councilmember Garza. All those in favor? The minutes are I proved. Next we have citizen communication. And as you know, this is the general testimony or communication on items that are not on the agenda. If you want to speak on any of the agenda items you can sign up for that also. First we have David Richardson and after that we will have bob batland. No, David Richardson -- yes, David Richardson and then bob batland. >> Good afternoon. Members of the committee. I want to speak to something that is probably not on the radar, but I'm sure other people mentioned the Texas transportation institute I-35 corridor study. I'm not going to go through the details of that, but I think one of the findings that they had was that a hybrid strategy needs to be implemented. Trip reduction through online classes and that kind of stuff, telecommuting, travelers shortening the distance they need to travel, spread travel through a broader time range. Of course, HOV transit and other non-motorized options. But these strategies apply not only to central Austin. As you know, southwest Austin, dripping springs, [3:09:54 PM] Wimberley, hays county, is growing very, very rapidly and I want to say the current land use policy that's in place for southwest Austin is equivalent to sprawl, limiting impervious cover to 25%. This is of course S.O.S. In 2007 impervious cover in the developed areas of the Barton springs zone was 23% according to Matt Holland. If search for answers to our transportation answers is limited to central Austin and we ignore about the challenges suburban areas face in southwest Austin, Barton springs and Edward's aquifer will be lost. Nothing that Austin has done since S.O.S. Was approved by voters has slowed growth in the hill country. The growth is modeled on sprawl. Sprawl is ravenous in its consumption of open space and the generation of traffic, what we're trying to fight here. Current policies are ineffectual to control direct growth beyond Austin's jurisdiction. Dripping springs, bee cave demonstrate absolutely no movement towards mass transit solutions to address Austin's transportation problems. And that's the rub. Growth in suburbs sun sustainable when Austin is the sole destination for regional generation of income and wealth, businesses. Amd's move to oak hill was premised to the reduction of commute time for employees. The people here need to look beyond the environmentalist mantras of no growth in the Barton springs zone. That growth is here and is way past time to look for plan B. Thank you. >> Kitchen: Thank you. Bob latland. And then after bob is David king. [3:11:56 PM] >> Good afternoon chair and committee members. Taxis need a level playing field, not necessarily the same rules. While the taxi drivers and companies are not attempting to mandate an agreement, action to level the playing field is urgent. Possible areas to consider are permitting rules, pricing rules, insurance requirements, training requirements, accessibility mandates, vehicle inspection requirements, licensing requirements and reporting requirements. I'm sure I've left out a number of things that could be considered. It doesn't necessarily have to be the same as any other type of company that might be involved in transporting people, but all of those things tend to make taxi companies uncompetitive today, and some adjustments to those could be helpful. Point number 2, the proposal accompanying the petition relative to tncs is unacceptable. Voters need to know that the proposal allows companies to choose their own rates or to dictate rates, I guess is a more clear statement. Decide if vehicles need any identifying markings, set their own standards for mobility impaired and monitor themselves, requires the governor to step in to declare a state of emergency if there is an emergency in Austin, and we feel that surge pricing might need to be suspended. Tncs are the enforcement authority for the 12-hour rule, which is the rule that says a driver can only be -- have a shift of 12 hours. There is no information given to the city so they [3:13:56 PM] could step in if they wanted to. It allows the tncs to set their own zero tolerance program and monitor it. They just have to have one. It doesn't say what it has to be. It requires only one customer service representative for the company in Austin, no matter how big they might grow to be. I don't know if that's a big deal or not. I found it amusing reading last night. My final point is a personal one. We appreciate you, Ann, and I'll do what I can to make sure you're still representing Austin in the future. Thank you. [Applause]. >> Kitchen: Thank you. Bob, hold on a minute. Go ahead. >> Garza: Mr. Batland, thank you for your comments. I know we're not posted to talk about this, but my assumption would be that you would be against accepting the petition language, it sounds like. So I would encourage you -- we're taking public testimony tomorrow at 6:30. I would encourage you to come and speak about it. >> I'll be back. >> Garza: Thank you. >> Kitchen: Thank you. >> Zimmerman: Thanks, Mr. Latland. I'm going to refer to some testimony that was already given in front of this body when we had that very long, contentious discussion about tncs. I think one of the tncs, was it get me, stood here and testified and said we would be happy to do fingerprinting, background checks as part of our service. So I was looking forward to that happening so there would be a competitive choice. And then it didn't happen. And then I heard through the grapevine, well, they're waiting for the city to mandate fingerprints before they offer the choice. I'm like you could offer the choice without the councilman dating. >> I can't follow -- >> Kitchen: That's okay, Mr. Batland. >> I would like to say something. I am tired of the discussion [3:15:57 PM] of fingerprinting. I think it's a smoke screen. I think all of the types of things I have said are hiding from the people of Austin what this ordinance really does. And the less we speak -- I don't care how the fingerprinting thing comes out. I don't know that we'll ever be able to measure the difference. Personally I'd prefer if we required them, but as I said, I don't really care. I think we move on. But this ordinance with all the stuff that nobody talks about is damaging to the city relative to tncs and sets a horrible precedent of how we govern. >> Kitchen: Next we have David king and after David is Scott more list. >> Thank you, chair and vice-chair and councilmembers. I support your decision in December 9-2 vote to require mandatory background checks in the ordinance that you passed and I hope that you will not vote for the referendum to put this issue on the ballot. I think -- I hope you will stand behind your decision. I thank you all for being firm and for representing the citizens of Austin. And persevering through this onslaught. Thank you, councilmember kitchen and other councilmembers standing with her. I appreciate that. I'm here really to talk about neighborhood plans and how that's important to mobility. And I know there's been criticism by some on the council and some in the community about neighborhood plans and neighborhood associations. But I'm here to say that we need to strengthen them. That's to me a key. We need to do the reforms being discussed with our contact teams, but we need more resources put behind neighborhood planning. We need a neighborhood planning department with resources that are dedicated to helping neighborhoods do the planning in their [3:17:58 PM] neighborhoods and make sure that we have a comprehensive set of plans for all neighborhoods throughout the city. And that can dove tail really nicely into codenext. We're going to work to rewrite our code and then we won't really have the resources to help plan the implementation of that. I think we need to take this opportunity now toet a neighborhood planning department in pla and start growing that. It will take a couple of budgeting cycles to get there, I realize that, but let's start at this next cycle to move in that direction. We can -- the plans need to really reflect the transit corridors and the plans for those and sidewalks where we need them and bicycle lanes, all these mobility options. We need to be embedded in our plans and we need a consistent set of plans throughout all neighborhoods in the city. I hope that you will support more resources for neighborhood planning. And it's a proactive strategy, it's not reactive after the fact. And speaking of proactive, I think we need to transition away from reactive, complaint driven system for issues in the neighborhood into a more proactive process. So that we have inspections throughout the development and permitting process instead of let's do the honor system and say they're going to do the right thing, and then on the back end they haven't done the right thing and we have the consequences to suffer through. So I don't think a complaint driven system really works for us. We need to be more proactive. And councilmember Zimmerman's proposal is a very proactive approach to the nuisance strike force that he's recommended. And I think that that proposal deserves consideration from the council. I hope you will take a look for that. That's a proactive way to deal with nuisances in the neighborhood to deal with what we have already on the books. I appreciate, councilmember Zimmerman, you bringing that forward and I hope you get a good hearing on that. Again, I think neighborhood planning should be a priority and I hope that you will start moving in that direction with our next budget cycle. [Buzzer sounds] Thank you. >> Kitchen: Thank you. Mr. King? >> Zimmerman: Thank you very much for bringing that up. Just to let you know, I am [3:19:59 PM] planning to put that on the next public safety committee agenda. Somebody had mentioned that to me, that they thought we should have some of the discussions on strs in the public safety meeting. So thanks for bringing that up. >> Kitchen: Next we have Scott Morris and after Scott, bill bunch. >> Thank you very much for accommodating our discussion tonight. My name is Scott Morris. I'm with the central Austin community development corporation. I believe I've been donated time. I may have six minutes. >> Kitchen: Um donated from whom? >> Mr. Steven Mapp. >> Kitchen: Okay. So that would be -- I got you. >> Thank you. Good afternoon. I want to thank you all for this opportunity to discuss the return of light rail to the public debate. We begin our involvement with this mode in 2012 with the organization of a coalition of communities and groups to respond to the urban rail planning process about a year before it was rebranded as project connect. Members from that coalition went on to oppose the proposition 1 question in November of 2014. And the reason for that basically was that the alignment was in the wrong place. It was cost ineffective and it basically promoted a shaping agenda versus a serving agenda. Since November 2014 and the defeat of project connect, there has been a number of positive steps and development toward a north Austin. 15 days after the election campo's technical advisory [3:21:59 PM] committee introduced a 498-million-dollar line item for high capacity transit in central Austin. That is a requirement of the fta that it be on a fiscal plan. In March the zandan poll was taken, last year, about four or five months after the election. And it asked the question, assuming an increase in taxes for projects that involve lots of new construction, how supportive of you are the following transportation initiatives and infrastructure projects? 66% of austinites responding to that poll favored building an above-ground rail system and are Willi to be taxed for it. Fast forward to October, the mobility atx findings were released. A gis analyst with the firm civic analytics by the name Nathan Brigman ran a population density analysis for the city of Austin, found where there is a high level of essentially population density that would be transit dependent and drew a line. That line forms basically the backbone of a proposal that we've been analyzing for the last several weeks. It consists of the guadalupe-lamar alignment from 183 down, can crossing the first street bridge and then serving the east Riverside corridor. It then goes south on pleasant valley. And Mr. Brigman has identified a new terminus in dove springs. We find that there is [3:24:00 PM] sufficient density there to support transit. So from north Lamar and rundberg our partners at naca, we've known about that density for several years and they have been part of our coalition, down to dove springs. We have a 14.7-mile alignment. Analyzing that we've worked with civic analytics to obtain their data, analyzing that, the total population within a half mile of that alignment is 136,450. That is 196% more than project connect 9.6-mile proposal that was defeated. Total jobs along that alignment, 171,206. This is 77% more than project connect proposal. We're not here to knock any other mode. We think that a ballot proposition, a ballot project for this November is very, very possible. We have the public support for rail in the right place. We have support for bikes and sidewalks. And there are groups that are working on I-35 that have been working on very community-oriented and humannizing proposals in order to change that thoroughfare and we think that that would be suitable for a ballot. So we are into -- leave no mode behind mode as it were and we think that the -- we think that this could advance into a really good ballot proposition. Thank you very much. That's all I have. I really appreciate the opportunity to discuss the future of mobility in the city. >> Kitchen: Thank you. I know you'll continue to be involved as we go through our public conversation. Thank you. >> Zimmerman: One question to ask, if I could. Just a quick comment. Many times I've seen [3:26:02 PM] presentations and people that favor some kind of transit. They talk about all of the above. And when they say all the above, they mean not traffic congestion relief. They mean not widening freeways, not creating new thoroughfares. So the frustration I have in district 6, I'm in a suburb, I'm separated by green spaces. We don't have density there at all. And they get really frustrated when they hear all the above except widening the roads. So my message is if you say all the above, it has to include widening roads, otherwise I think the message loses credibility with my voters. >> Well, I appreciate that. And what we're seeing with district 6 and the red line specifically is that there are many constituents that board those trains everyday and those trains are absolutely full by the time they get to Mcneil. There are no seats available for central Austin, east Austin by the time -- because they have district 6 constituents in them. And I would say that in general when we're talking about widening highways, I think that we're talking about giving people choices. They're essentially on those highways now because they don't have a choice. And for us to look back at this time, look back at 2016 from 2020 or 2024, and rail is a long timeline project for us to look back at this time and say we had an opportunity, but we didn't take it. I think we have to start somewhere. And I think you'll find that in district 6 there are many rail fans because we've met a few. >> Zimmerman: I'm sorry, I'm from district 6 and they voted for me. We have thousands of people that use rail or are interested in it, and we have tens of thousands who don't want it. They're not interested in it. They don't want it expanded. They want the roadways expanded. So I want to focus on instead of thousands that want it, I need to focus on the tens of thousands who [3:28:02 PM] have rejected it. >> Kitchen: Councilmember Gallo? >> Gallo: Can you hear me? It seems really low. Thank you for bringing up the point that the red-line is often full by the time it gets to a certain point. One of the things that I think is a policy discussion that at some point we need to bring up is my understanding -- I can't remember whether it's Leander or cedar park actually doesn't contribute to capital metro. And I know a lot of the ridetaries get on the red-line at lakeline were actually probably from those communities. So I do think that is a conversation we need to have because if the city is funding -- if capital metro is funding that then it needs to be able to service the people that actually are from the areas that are supporting it with a portion of their sales tax. So thank you for bringing that forward. >> Kitchen: Yes. Help me remember to get that on our agenda. You can -- y'all can let donna know. Thank you very much. Okay. Next we have bill bunch. And after bill, Scott Johnson. >> Madam chair, bill bunch with save our springs and [indiscernible] Local coalition. I just want to encourage you to step back a little bit and look at some big picture planning issues. Bomb we have a severely broken 20- 40 campo plan. We need to put some fresh ideas on the table from the city, , preferably working very closely with the community and Travis county. I just wanted to touch on this because I think a lot of folks are not aware of how broken our plan is. Start with the idea that a lot of people have that we haven't been building roads and we've got to catch up. As this chart shows, the red-line is the lane miles we've been adding over the past few decades, so we've been building roads actually faster than population [3:30:03 PM] growth shown in blue. Our traffic gets worse because the roads we're building are basically to serve farther and farther flunk sprawl where people drive further and further. So vehicle miles in green have gone way up. So that process is broken and we have to find a new process. But our campo plan keeps doing the same thing. As this excerpt from a presentation I gave to the Sierra club, the title is absolutely accurate, we have a 35 billion-dollar transportation plan that admits that traffic will get 10 times worse after we spend the 35 billion. Next slide, please. And this shows that -- so the top half of the slide an actual excerpt from appendix G where it says point-blank that after we spend the $35 billion, our A.M. Congestion and then P.M. Congestion is charted on the bottom so you can see it. The blue is our A.M. And P.M. Congestion in 2010. The yellow is if we did nothing in 2040 between now and 2040. The red is if we build out the 2040 plan. 10 times worse, 35 billion bucks. So all those roads, and the plan is overwhelmingly road expansions, toll road, debt financed toll road heavy, and traffic gets way, way worse. We've got to do something different. Next slide, please. So why is it so messed up? It starts with the actual underlying data is absolutely wrong. In the middle is the state office of state demographics recommended population projections through 2040. What they built, the 2040 plan on, is on the far right. [3:32:04 PM] Grossly out of whack projected population growth. Next slide. This sort of shows that especially out of whack in hays county, 245% higher than what the recommended projection for state -- by the state demography for hays county. Next slide, please. So then it's compounded -- this population way overshoot is compounded by an extreme -- even way more extreme overprojection of future employment. [Buzzer sounds] That's shown on the bottom right. With the labor force there's no way that's going to happen. Then that led in to a road network that is meant to serve something that's never going to happen. We've got to unwind this and start from square one and get it right. I hope you will help us do that. >> Kitchen: Thank you. Our last speaker for citizens communication is Scott Johnson. >> Afternoon. Can you hear me? Good afternoon, councilmembers. My name is Scott Johnson. I was the lead citizen on the distracted driving ordinance and also a member of the vision zero task force. I sprongly support the action that the council took in December of this past year related to tncs and also support the way that you went about it in terms of getting input from both sides. What's being done now and what's being offered now I'm not certain if that will succeed, but perhaps a compromise is needed. I also do not support the petition drive that was put forward recently for this issue. One of my concerns with this is when the city of Austin has asked the transportation network companies where's the data related to drunk driving, the reduction in drunk driving, one of the [3:34:05 PM] major benefits that is touted by these companies, they have not produced that information. It may be possible that the drivers themselves are in an altered state when they're driving. It's uncertain what sort of screening that's going on because it's all self-reported. So the idea that the tncs are going to provide some overarching benefit to get drunk drivers off the road and that we know what that benefit is and can quantify it has yet to be proven. In addition, in some states anyway there's issues about who's responsible when there's an accident. A close family member of mine in Arizona got t-boned by an Uber driver. That Uber driver admitted guilt and then she and my family member went after to apply their insurance against the Uber driver and the Uber driver pointed a finger at Uber and Uber pointed the finger back at the driver. So the idea that a company would come in without seeking a partnership with the city and then push back when rules that I believe are reasonable are being put forward is something that we could definitely choose to work with companies that want to work with us and hopefully those companies will present themselves, the one that was mentioned earlier, don't know if they presented themselves fully or not, but I support the action that the majority of the council takes -- that took in December. I support you, councilmember kitchen, and we need to stay strong on this particular issue and be sure that you direct staff to get as much information from these companies as possible and not simply be straight armed by them. I'm not saying that they are, but dig inasmuch as possible so that there's a level playing field there. As well I believe that when I've been involved in conversations that there is an impression by some staff [3:36:07 PM] members at the city of Austin that there is an inherent benefit with these companies being in town, particularly the two that are following and promoting the petition drive to get it on the calendar. [Buzzer sounds] Thank you very much. >> Kitchen: Thank you. Okay. Members, we'll now turn to item number 3. And this is an agenda item to address some issues that have come up about our calendar. And the proposes changes we approved -- when we approved our calendar, I guess back in December, we approved September 14th. And so the request is to reschedule that to September 7th. And I think the reasoning there is because there was a conflict with another meeting. And then the second item is that we had approved may 27th, and the discussion is to reschedule that to may 9th. I have someone that -- Mr. Dobbs, did you sign up to speak on this item? I don't see him. No, I guess not. Okay. So do y'all have any questions or concerns about making those changes? We're moving from September 14th to September 7th. And then moving from may 27th to may 9th. >> Zimmerman: Do you need a motion for those changes? I would make that motion. >> Kitchen: Second? Okay. We have a motion by councilmember Zimmerman, second by councilmember Gallo. Did you have a question? >> Gallo: I'm assuming they don't conflict with any other committees? >> >> Kitchen: No, they don't conflict at this point. All those in favor? The motion passes. We'll go on to item number 4. Let's see, we have no speakers listed for item number 4. And item number 4 is discussion and possible action on atd's proposed 250,000-dollar contract with the center for [3:38:07 PM] transportation research. >> Good afternoon. My name is Jim dale, assistant director with the transportation department. Just real quickly, this is going to be a presentation, brief presentation on a request for entering into an interlocal agreement with the university of Texas center for transportation research. At the end of this we'd like to ask for your support to move this to the full council. In doing this presentation I also think it's a test, a test by my director and fellow assistant director to see if an aggie can make an informative, compelling presentation about the university of Texas. [Laughter] We'll see how this goes. >> Kitchen: Our aggie on the committee stepped out. [Laughter]. >> I have no problem waiting. >> Kitchen: No, it's okay. You can go ahead. >> All right, thank you. So just some background, university of Texas center for transportation research, they are one of the leading university-based transportation research centers in the world. And we're fortunate to have them here locally in Austin. I think it's a great resource for us to tap into for some of the challenges we're facing here in terms of transportation. There's some other credentials there in terms of them being a top tier 1 university transportation center. And also a number of contracts that they currently have with fellow transportation agencies. In terms of the agreement and some of the data or some of the requests or details of the request that we're asking for in agreement is it would be for a duration of five years. We're requesting authorization for $500,000 per year. The reference earlier I heard $250,000 is in the title. That is the amount of funding that council had approved in this year's budget for us to use towards this grant or towards this interlocal agreement. So it does provide access to a multidisciplinary expertise, expertise that the transportation department can pull on as well as the items that council could [3:40:08 PM] direct us to -- direct the city manager to have staff follow up on. So that resource there is for the department as well as the city as a whole. Some of our initial projects, the one that was approved just recently at city council, last city council meeting, was to go out and contract for transportation management center services. We did select a consultant, but part of that is we want to come back to the council and to the community to explain the investment that's being made, what is the benefit to the community? And so we could have -- we could do that work. Our consultant could do that work, but we think it's an un-- the university of Texas an unbiased entity that can provide that performance, that audit, if you will, of those services. Some of the other things just briefly I want to talk about is developing a data warehouse and working really closely -- we see data as an asset and that asset we can unlock some of the value for, benefit for our community. Some of the ways we're doing that right now is there's a company that provides navigation -- incentive-based navigation services for their customers. And what they've done is they've worked with the watershed protection department to get information on when the low water crossings are closed. They now take that information into their app and they will recommend to their customers not to go that way because that particular section of roadway is closed. So they'll route them around it. We're pursuing additional conversations with that company will also information about our school Zones, when they're active. They're interested in that information to route their customers around the school school Zones or at least give them an alert when they approach a school zone. We see safety benefits from that. We're also in some conversations -- I want to spend a little bit more time on the data because I think it is really valuable. Conversations with another company in terms of how we can use our signal timing data to cars drive at a certain speed so they have to stop less. So there's some [3:42:08 PM] environmental benefits and some safety benefits as well as mobility benefits there. And many of you are aware of our adaptive signal control pilots we're working on. We're going to engage the university of Texas to do the before and after studies for that as well. >> Kitchen: Let me ask you a quick question. You mentioned the data and using the data to work with other organizations, other companies. To help with company flow. It sounds like that's part of it, traffic flow and safety S there an application there for working with our transit authority? >> Oh, definitely. There's -- I think us sharing data in terms of traffic conditions with help also on the transit side and also one of the things that we're working on really closely with cap metro right now is information back on how their transit system is performing and we're using that to look at improvements in terms of I'll say transit authority priority or where they may be able to bypass a line of cars, get up to the front of the signal and make a left turn to help that traffic to help their system perform better. I think that goes both ways. >> Okay, thank you. >> You're welcome. Some potential future projects we've listed those out here. Some white papers, more along the lines of research, peer city reduce. Also listed out some best practices that were interested in leaning on the university of Texas and their agreement with a much larger audience than what we can engage with on what some of those best practices are in bringing them back to Austin. There are benefits both for the city. I think some of those I've gone through here. Especially like I mentioned the exposure to the latest best practices and strategies for some of the emerging research, bringing that to bear and really implementing the research. And there's also benefits to str. In terms of our upcoming schedule, we did present a very similar presentation to the urban transportation [3:44:09 PM] commission on January 12th. We're here today and then we're hoping, depending on the outcome of your vote, is to move this forward to the city council on February 25th. Thank you. >> Kitchen: Okay. Any questions? Councilmember Zimmerman? >> Zimmerman: First of all, let me say as one of those aggies, maybe heretical to say it, but UT research would be just as good as aggie research. That's not why I'm going to be voting against. It has nothing to do with UT. If I were to talk to my constituents -- when I talk to my constituents about things like this when we have town halls, I don't think anybody would deny there's some value to what's being proposed. There's no question there. The first issue I would start with is my constituents continue to tell me, work on the traffic congestion problem. And I look through the benefits that were described here. That's really not what this 500,000 a year, two and a half million, it's not what it's about. So the answer from the constituents would be no. And I don't think -- honestly, I don't think the constituents who pay the taxes, I don't think they would have brought this item for us to even consider. And that's not to say that it doesn't have some value. It's just not what my constituents are asking for. So I'm going to be voting no. >> Kitchen: Councilmember Gallo? >> Gallo: I have a couple of questions foryou. What was outcome with the committee meeting that was held prior to this, the utc? >> The utc? They voted in support of -- I don't know exact vote, how it came out, but they did vote, the final vote was in support of moving forward to the mobility committee, and one of the things that they asked for is that we come back to them to provide an update on the work that we're doing through the UT contract and also to hear about our budgets each year as well. >> Gallo: Okay. So when it's brought before the council if you could make sure that in the information that comes to the council we have the result of that vote also, please. >> Yes. I apologize if they're not in your packets [3:46:10 PM] already. I'll take the blame for that. We'll make sure it does go to the full council. >> Gallo: That's fine. So the amount of $500,000 per year, is the 500,000 for this year in this year's budget? >> Right now we have specifically identified 250,000 that was approved in the budget. We do have additional funds available through other programs to help support -- like some of the funding coming from the transportation management center grant for those performance metrics, we would use the funding for that to help pay for the audit. So the $250,000 is a set amount and then the other $250,000 would come from other available sources. And that could be programs that we already have funded. Like I mentioned for our transportation management center. >> Gallo: Okay. So I think it would be helpful since we're being asked to approve more than what was indicated in the budget for this particular program, if we could know very clearly where your -- when it comes before council, very clearly what other places it's coming from and what programs would not be funded because of moving the money from those areas. >> Yes. We'll definitely do that. Can I add a little bit more to that? We are just asking right now for authority. It doesn't mean that we'll spend up to the $500,000. And also in future years we wanted to have that flexibility so if funding through grants or other funding opportunities came available that we could draw on that. So we don't have much visibility beyond this first year. A little bit into next year. But that's why we're asking for the flexibility in there. We'll definitely include it for this first year. >> Gallo: And I understand flexibility is good, but a commitment to hold down property taxes and the city's spending to be able to hold down property taxes is something I'm committed to. So any time that a department comes forward and asks for additional money over and above what was funded in the budget, I just want to make sure that everyone understands I will ask, okay, if you are moving things around, where were you moving it from and what is not going to [3:48:10 PM] be spent and funded because of that. That's the reason for the question. >> Understood. >> Gallo: I had one other question, a question on rmi, but I wanted to first get to metrics. I read this, but to me it doesn't give me definitive met ticks that at the end of the year we can go back and say we have spent X number of dollars and this is what we've obtained. So when it comes before the council if we could have a very distinct group of metrics that we can come back to in a year and be able to evaluate whether the money was funded properly or not -- appropriately, not properly. Appropriately or not. This all sounds wonderful, but it doesn't give me something to be able to evaluate it next year and say it was worth the spending or not. I'm sure the staff will do a wonderful job to make sure it is, but I think the council tubs to look at things from a standpoint of funding to process metrics and metrics that are easily evaluated by the council. >> Yes. We'll look at the metrics for this particular contract and figure out what we can bring back to the council so y'all can measure whether you did get that value or not. >> Gallo: That would be great. >> Kitchen: Okay. We did have one question also. The relationship between this project and rmi, the rmi project. Is there an intersection there at all? >> There are two separate efforts, but there are conversations that happen between rmi and university of Texas as well. >> Kitchen: I guess my question is the data that will become available through this project I assume would be something that would be shared with rmi and the project. >> Absolutely. >> Kitchen: So they're not complicative, in other words -- duplicative, in other words? >> No. >> Kitchen: Okay. Any further -- do I have a motion to move this forward to the council? Okay. Do you want to -- are you moving -- what's your motion, councilmember Garza? >> Move it to council with staff's recommendation. >> Kitchen: Do we have a second? No second? [3:50:14 PM] I will second it. Okay. So we've got a motion to move this forward with -- to the full council with the staff's recommendation. >> Gallo: I'm just going to make a couple of comments. I'm going to abstain from this, which is not an indication that I won't vote for it at the council, but I think I've indicated to you some of the information I would like to see before I support it. Thank you. >> Kitchen: How about if we change the motion to move it forward -- how about with a recommendation from council that this go forward with the additional information that you're requesting? Would that work for you? >> Zimmerman: Well, I was going to say maybe what we need to do is bring it back to this committee and try to get some additional details before we vote on moving it to council. Would that help, councilmember Gallo? No? To have this committee get the information? >> Kitchen: We're trying to put words in your mouth. >> Gallo: I don't think it needs to come back to the committee, but I think when it goes before the full council I want to see some of the information I asked for. So I would support moving it to the council, but I'm not going to support at this time moving it with a recommendation. Just to clarify. >> Kitchen: Go ahead. >> Garza: That we move this to the council for the entire council to consider. >> Kitchen: The motion on the table is to move it forward to the council. All those in favor? Three? All opposed? Three-one. Thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> Kitchen: Next we have item number 5, which is a briefing on the capital metro central corridor study. So we do have a few folks that will be speaking on this. So we'll go ahead and take their comments so that we have the benefit of their comments when we hear from the briefing. So let's see, first we have Steven Knapp. And after Steven we have roger baker. [3:52:17 PM] >> Thank you, guys, for opening up the conversation about rail. It's been pretty exciting, especially watching the new council take shape over the past few months and utc take it up, seeing other conversations happen with other entities about the possibility of bringing rail back to the citizens for a vote. Just seeing something substantial happen. And just seeing some other people in the room, I can guess what some of them are going to talk about is where -- not where project connect went wrong, but how do it right in the future, serve an area that has shown lots of transit usage in the past and how can we bring to them a solution that could be something substantial for many decades to come. So I want to speak really briefly as to maybe why now for rail. Certainly project connect, the proposition was from 2014. What we saw, I do live in central Austin, I live in the crestview neighborhood. I live near the tod area there, the big infill redevelopment. Around transit. What we are seeing locally is that we look at our neighborhood plan in crestview, for example, was established in 2004. There was planning in our neighborhood plan for light rail stations. There was other neighborhood plans adjacent to mine that began to opt into the vmus. They understand when growth happens it should first happen on the corridors. That's where people are moving through and that's where the first growth, the thickening up should happen on the corridors. So we've been supportive of that certainly. As we see most recently the past -- past 2015 with Adu regulations changing with less parking, we understand that people will be looking for other modes as they move through our community. So where we are now in 2016, why now, why light rail? I want you to know there is a lot of public support to bring back a significant investment. And wee see that in -- earlier Scott Morris was talking about all of the above. Rail is that big investment that will take many years to construct and to come [3:54:17 PM] online N between that there's looking at what can we do on year one, year two, to continue to foster that? And I do ride Lamar daily as a bus rider or as a cyclist. And the thing that's kind of sad is when Luke at will people take rail, first it involves a behavior shift will texans ride rail? Will Americans ride rail? Will austinites ride rail? We need to look at the huge now. The routes on Lamar have always been our most significant routes, but the riderships have been declining over the past several years. You can look back at the Numbers on cap metro, in spring of 2012, the route served 17,000 riders a day. Fast forward to spring of 2015 when metro rapid had come online, the route 1 service had been reduced in frequency. That corridor on those routes combined are only serving 13,893 people. That's 3400 people who had made a behavioral shift to say, hey, I don't want to drive today. I'm going to ride my bike, in this case I'm going to ride the bus. They've been met with hey, we're thickening up here. There's more people living here, ball of a sudden we saw a reduction in service. We saw a reduction in transit investment. I say that in the sense we added metro rapid, but with we cut the local services out by half. So you had riders with nowhere to go. Everyday 3500 people who used to ride the bus three years ago they're choosing something else everyday. As someone that lives in the congested central core of the city I hope they're not using the car because that's just more congestion. So why I say why now is because it's a good time to bring to the brick and saying we're looking five to 10 years down the road. We're also in November hopefully going to be looking at sidewalks and bike plans and these are things to implement very quickly, but we're seeing a bigger picture and now is the time to talk about that. I feel the conversation is valid. [3:56:17 PM] And it certainly is going to resonate. Adus were recent, parking reductions were recent. And people say we get it. They're going to be not driving, but what are they doing? 'S the unanswered thing. I hope you guys here's there's a lot of support for significant investment on the Lamar corridor. It's financially a good decision for us compared to other corridors because it is our heaviest transit usage corridor. >> Kitchen: Thank you. Next we have roger baker. And after roger we have Lyndon Henry. >> Hello there. My name is roger baker. And I'm a long time transportation activist and also on the board of save our springs alliance and go to all the campo meetings. I'd like to make a few comments about rail and that is as far as I can see it's the only real game changer in terms of relieving congestion, at least in a limited area because it offers the possibility of very fast travel along a particular linear corridor. Now, in the case of Austin you have a very congested highway in the form of I-35 and also on mopac and they're totally congested during peak hour, but that is largely traffic in and out of the city. By contrast along the lamar- guadalupe corridor you have more local traffic and that's an ideal corridor to put something like a new rail start. And I believe that most experts shown the situation would come to the same conclusion. Now, you can take a [3:58:20 PM] whole lot of time and do a very complex, long-term plan like the campo plan, but the campo plan makes it much worse as bill bunch was pointing out. So I think the only real game changer that I've seen are a rail system and that has to be integrated with buses. A lot of people think you just do rail alone or buses alone. No, have you to integrate the two. Sort of like ribs on a spine. I don't of think we could fix I-35, but we could afford to put in a rail start and I think, you know, there are various plans on the table and you can look at the maps and all that, but I think both Lyndon Henry and Scott Morris have an excellent idea of what we need to do. The only alternative to cutting through congestion that I've seen is the ctrma's plans for express lanes on their freeways. And if you paid a lot of money you could get through town faster. But I take a much more practical and legitimate planned way to do that is with rail. So thank you. >> Kitchen: Thank you. Next we have Lyndon Henry >> Kitchen:next we have linden Henry and after him Dave Dobbs. >> Thank you. Thank you to the committee. I'm linden Henry, former capital metro board member, analyst for capital metro. Currently I'm a private consultant, online writer and a technical consultant to the light rail now project. Today I'm speaking on why the capital metro central corridor study should focus on urban rail in the Guadalupe Lamar corridor and I have a handout before you which you should have before you on your desk. Guadalupe Lamar is Austin's [4:00:22 PM] busiest, densest local corridor. That's why lighting rail transit has been envision there had 45 years. Guadalupe Lamar is Austin's major urban central corridor. Unfortunately, the central corridor comprehensive transit analysis recently launched by capital metro seems on track to become merely the disinturred dome high capacity transit study especially if it revives and reuses the same methodology. For example, not only did it ignore actual travel corridors, instead mislabelling entire city sectors as corridors, but even worse it eliminated guadalupe-lamar as an intact travel corridor by slicing it into segments that were effectively meaningless when not analyzed as a whole. You can read analysis on austinrail.com. There's an abundance of well documented evidence attesting to the preeminent need for an electrified light rail line in this corridor as the starter backbone of an eventually extensive light rail system throughout the urban area. There's an abundance of evidence for community support for rail, particularly in this cookers also documented on austinrailnow.com and Scott Morrison's presentation you saw earlier. For decades Austin's rail planning has diddled, dawdled, bumble, meanwhile the need for coordinating affordable housing with access to affordability mobility has become a serious crisis. Light veil an essential component of the remedy because it can provide affordable public transport that supports sustainability and urban livability. Well-designed electric light rail systems in cities like Houston, Denver, Portland, Minneapolis, Salt Lake City have demonstrated they can meet the goals with high [4:02:23 PM] quality public transport at much lower cost per passenger mile. In a fast growing city like Austin high capacity transit is critical yet Austin's land use policy has been a mess, oriented primarily to the narrow interests of some developers, the affluent, tax base expansion and the notion of a perpetual party city. But Austin is a city of established neighborhoods -- [ buzzer sounding ] -- Where people need to live, travel to school and access other essentials. I've got another sentence or two to finish. Can I just go ahead? >> Kitchen: Yes, go ahead. >> 45 years of studies costing tens of millions of dollars have concluded light rail can help with these issues. Austin needs to focus capital metro's central corridor study on developing an affordable guadalupe-lamar light rail project is a huge opportunity to move forward. Thank you. >> Kitchen: Thank you very much. Next we have Dave Dobbs. >> Thank you very much, madam chairman for your consideration. Councilmembers, thank you for hear me. I'm Dave Dobbs, executive director of the Texas association for public transportation. I've lived in Austin for 46 years. I'm one of councilmember kitchen's constituents. And I am an advocate for doing something out of the box that is not roadway oriented because what I have learned -- and I am sensitive to this, councilmember Zimmerman, I own a car and most of my trips are done in the automobile. I live 8 miles out from the center of the city but you cannot build your way out of congestion. It's impossible simply because in a city where you have buildings, people, cars, and public spaces, the only thing that has any mallability is the cars, the mobility situation, you have to get more people on less vehicles. If you don't do that, you're simply not going to have [4:04:23 PM] success. Now, I have presented to you a sheet, and I'm holding up here -- I'm sorry I'm not good with electronic stuff, but I'm trying to show what linden Henry is talking about. This is an imagine Austin map I've superimposed the rail system on and electrified the metrorail in the and carbohydrate in the corridor and you see with the electric rail and light rail in the Guadalupe corridor you've created emotion opportunities for affordable housing, in other words when you look at current housing, there is access to transit and where you want it, it's not affordable to people because there's just not enough of it. You've got to increase the supply. In order to increase the supply you have to go someplace where you can build it. In order to go someplace where you can build it you've got to have access to it. So this is why I put this map on here. This is the solution. Now, it actually helps please Mr. Zimmerman's constituents because if you look at what we can do out in the northwest, we can spend $500 million instead of $4 billion on road development and add enough metrorail capacity to feed it down into crestview and on to north Lamar and you would have a way for those people to get to work. And they may want to drive their cars. I like to drive my car. But, frankly, it's getting to be quite a problem. And I don't see any way to find enough money, without bankrupting the city and if you're going to throw money at something, let's throw something -- money at something that will work. Now, on the last section, you have a chance to read about how much money we're subsidizing burbs, from the magazine, we're spending through tax breaks and so forth all kinds of money that goes for -- it's the home exemption, basically. And I get it too. I've got a home loan. So what I'm trying to say is we need to get something back [4:06:23 PM] for our money. If we don't build inside the city and move people inside of the city and then try to deal with folks that live out in your area, Mr. Zimmerman, with an alternative, then we're going to go bankrupt. Thank you very much. >> Kitchen: Thank you. Mr. Morris, you're signed up for this but we did get the chance to hear from you already about rail. Do you mind if we just go on? Because we're a little late and we have you down for item 7 also. >> I have some comments specific to the study. >> Kitchen: If you could be a little quicker, it would be helpful because we're running a little late. >> Thank you very much. We did oppose prop 1 and 1 of those -- one of the things that we felt a responsibility to do is continue to work on rail after the election. One of those efforts was meeting with the contractors and I just wanted to explain from a slightly different perspective that some of the capacity and limitations of the study we're about to discuss. And the in the very early days aft election, one of the contractors says, hey, why don't we take the project connect data and apply a slightly different filter, instead of looking at that time from a -- from a shaping perspective and weighting it according to economic development potential, why don't we look at it from a serving perspective. The data is already there. Let's see what emerges. We began to see this initiative as -- on slides from capital metro as the heart of the city initiative and that occurred as early as December following the election. And we met with capital metro in early March and they said an rfp is eminent. We are about to release a request for proposal will on studying the central corridor using -- [ buzzer sounding ] >> Was that three? Okay. That seems like a minute. >> Kitchen: That didn't seem like three. Go ahead. >> From our perspective, we registered as a vendor. This process was put on hold for seven months. When it finally emerged in August we registered as a [4:08:25 PM] vendor so that we can engage in that process. The scope of that project is basically two separate projects. One is studying the downtown area circulation and then phase two of that project is working on the central corridor. We believe the geographic limitations of that have been changed over time. It is a central corridor project and the purpose of the study is to benefit downtown for downtown and by downtown. And we would just caution that if we are going to proceed with the central corridor cta -- I support it. I support the selection of ae com as the vendor. But please understand the limitations. We will not get there from here with that study. 30-month time line will place any recommendation outside the council's ability to mark this up for a 2018 bond. We're looking at 2020 at the earliest. When we get there we'll see it's going to be an lpa or locally preferred alternative for downtown and not a systemwide plan we really need. >> Kitchen: Thank you. I understand you're discussing your perspective on the limitations of the study. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Kitchen: I think we're ready for our presentation. >> Thank you, chair, members of the committee. Todd hemmington, vice president planning and development at capital metro. Appreciate the opportnity to come before you today and talk about the study. You've heard citizen input and believe me we will be gathering much more of that during the course of this effort. But I want to give you an overview of what we intend to accomplish and the approach and some of the key information behind the effort >> Gallo: Can I ask a question. >> Sure. >> Gallo: The presentation you have I'm not seeing it in my notebook. Do we have copies of that? Do you know? [4:10:26 PM] >> Do we have any extras? I apologize for that. >> Gallo: No worries. Thank you. Thank you very much. >> So before I go into the details, just one -- sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words and in this case I think that is one of those cases. One of the central issues we're dealing within core of Austin, where we have limited road space, is making efficient use of it. And this graphic is intended to depict that. Showing 40 single occupant vehicles in the space they consume on a typical roadway as compared to those same individuals in one single public transit bus. So a little background in terms of how we got here. Project connect was our system planning effort that looked at a high level region-wide beyond the capital metro service area, beyond the city of Austin limits to the -- basically the five county region. We developed a system plan through that multi-year effort, major public involvement. We really tried to answer the three questions listed here, essentially what would the system look like, how would we pay for it, and how would we organize to develop and operate it? We worked closely with the city, campo, ctrma and txdot over the course of that effort. That let's to the vision map shown on the left as well as the identification of corridors on the right. We started with the -- all of these different corridors as shown, and then based on an analysis of where's the greatest potential for high capacity transit, we narrowed it to these, with the dark green, the north corridor and the central being those with the greatest immediate [4:12:27 PM] potential. We completed a north corridor study and then went into the central corridor study that led to the urban rail effort of November 2014 that was unsuccessful. This project is being enabled by remaining grant funds. We still want to work within the context of some of the work we've done -- we have done. But as you heard -- just to be clear, our intent is not just to take what we've done and build off of that. We want to do a thorough reinvestigation, look at concerns we've heard raised from stakeholders, as well as from others, and really come up with something that the community can support. In terms of our -- just a little word on the high capacity transit planning process. When we use the term "High capacity transit" because we don't believe the rail is the foregone conclusion and to do a good planning process we need to be open to a range of solutions. So we open the process with the full slate of different possibilities, and then the purpose of the planning process is to go through a narrowing process to find the technology, the solution, the corridor, et cetera, that meet the community's needs as best as possible. So the corridor study helps accomplish that and that's what this central corridor study is designed to do. Under the system graphic there, just briefly, the next steps that you actually need to work through to get to a built project, something that serves the community, you really need to do all three of these things. You have to define the system, find the funding, develop the organization, and then critically have substantial public involvement. So we do want to build off of some work that's already been done. As mentioned the downtown Austin plan, this slide -- the statements directly from that plan, we believe, are just really perfectly supportive of what we intend to do with this planning effort. So the primary goal of the [4:14:28 PM] central corridor study will be to develop pragmatic transit solutions as it says for a multimodal transit system that improves travel into and within downtown Austin and surrounding areas as well. The key task -- well, I'm sorry, the text that's flowing at the top is blocking my screen here. >> Casar: Mr. Hemmington I apologize for us running late. I think if we can focus in on the scope. >> Yes, ma'am, I'll go right to it. >> Kitchen: Scope, time line and public involvement would be -- >> Very good. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> Let me get there. The overall scope, four key elements, comprehensive improvement plantation I'll walk through the details of that for existing transit in the area, future high capacity transit investments, which is potentially rail or potentially bus rapid transit or other solutions, the finance and implementation plan and the public involvement plan. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> So some of the things we'll be looking at in that first task include a downtown transit mall or transit connection between the existing red line station, the Guadalupe lavaca corridor and Seaholm and the emerging development to the west. Optimizing and building upon the success we've already had with the transit corridor and Guadalupe and lavaca, identify ways to make that work even better in coordination with the city. ING before, again, on an existing investment, we have the rail terminal near the convention station. How can we turn that into really a smart hub with a range of mobility options and connections, including potentially a downtown circulator. And, similarly, look at developing a similar hub on the west side so that we have multiple places where a range of different transit solutions and other mobility solutions [4:16:29 PM] can come together. The transit entryways, an important aspect for us, is the ability to get into and out of the central core efficiently and effectively. Currently as you know there are significant choke points. We're making good progress in coordination with the city on addressing those already but we think there's more work needed. And then the next major task, skipping head too fast there, is what we would call alternatives analysis. This is more of the traditional planning that you heard about from the constituents. Delving into where might high capacity transit make sense in the central core. The bountyrys are open to discussion. We're going to be engaging the public to get further input on that, as well as the different subcorridors. But part of the intent here is not to quickly narrow down to one solution, but to make sure we've studied and can answer the tough questions about all of these different corridors, what are their merits, what are their pros and cons, what are the costs, what are the risks, what are the trade-offs? That's really the purpose of this system-level look at the central corridor. We think one of the lessons learned is not jump to go a jingle line and saying, aha, we have a solution, we really need to look at a range of alternatives. Some of the things we'll look at and build upon, but also learn from some of the things that could have been done better, were some of the work that has been already completed. As I mentioned project connect system plan, our service plan 2020, the frequent network where we put in 15-minute service and the all systems go plan that preceded those. The third major component is the finance and implementation plan. And as we've seen, that is absolutely essential to making this move forward. You can develop a plan but if you can't figure out how to fund it it's not going to go very far. We want to work closely with our partners as well as our finance staff internal to [4:18:29 PM] capital metro and the consultants that can bring best practices from around the country and even the world in terms of how to fund these types of projects. So we want to dig into significant detail on that, really have a close partnership internally and externally to find ways to put together a financial plan. The world has changed from when dart, for example, built their light rail system, 80% federal funding. That is no longer the case. At most you're looking at probably 50% federal funding if you choosing to down that path. And then a little more on the finance plan. Again, I think I've covered these points so I'll move on. Critically important, the fourth major element of the plan will be the public involvement effort. We recognize, as I mentioned the importance of building community support for the project. We know, as you all know better than anyone, there are diverse opinions in this community, and so we don't expect that we'll have 100% of support from everyone. This probably -- that's probably impossible in Austin, Texas, but building a critical mass of support is an essential part of this, as well as gathering input. We have lots of great ideas in this community, lots of different ideas for what role transit should play, what aspects and characteristics it needs to be most effective, we'll employ a bunch of different techniques, any time speakers -- bureaus, whole range of techniques to gather public input and work with the community and stakeholders, critically important city and other government entities as well as private sector as we work through this planning study. That in a relatively short time frame is a summary and I'll be glad to answer any questions. >> Kitchen: Thank you very much. I have a quick question. Let's see if anyone else has a question [4:20:30 PM] the time line, this is a multiyear project. Is that correct? >> Yes, ma'am. >> Kitchen: Tell me first what the expected end date, in other words, when would -- is this -- did I see somewhere it was -- >> We've scoped it for 30 months. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> We've just issued the notice to proceed. We're beginning discussions with the consulting team right now. If we can move it faster than that we certainly will, but, again, one of the lessons learned is rushing these types of efforts usually do not lead to a good outcome. >> Kitchen: So about two and a half years? >> Yes, ma'am. >> Kitchen: Then the public involvement phase of it, is that -- does that happen in a year? Where in that two and a half years -- >> We'll be beginning in -- right away. We have other studies that we're aware of and we've already been working to coordinate the city strategic -- coordinate the city tragic transportation plan, daa is doing a downtown parking study, capital metro is doing a system bus network study. So each of those we'll be having public meetings. We're working with them to cross-pollinate at each other's meetings so we can have a table when there's another meeting and so on. The major public involvement for this particular study, other than that initial outreach, will probably begin early summer and then ramp up more in the fall. >> Kitchen: Okay. All right. Any questions from my -- and welcome, mayor Adler. Thanks for joining us. Any questions? Thank you very much. I appreciate you coming. There's a lot of planning efforts going on. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Kitchen: And I think it's very helpful for us, as the mobility committee to understand all the different pieces throughout and of course this central corridor study is a very important piece, as it is our opportunity to think about rail. >> Sure. >> Kitchen: As well as bus rapid transit and those kinds of things. >> Yes, ma'am. As appropriate we'll be happy to come back and give updates. >> Kitchen: We'll want to have updates along the way. >> Very good. >> Kitchen: Thank you very much. >> You're welcome. >> Kitchen: We'll move to our [4:22:31 PM] next item, and thank you, councilmember Renteria, for joining us. We are running a little bit late. So our next item right now is -- we hope to catch up, we're on item 6, vision zero action report. We'll have a staff briefing on the recommendations. We have three speakers, and we'll hear from them first. So let's hear first from Hayden walker. Sorry. So Hayden walker. If y'all will come up and the next speakers can stand right here so we can go back and forth. After Hayden will be Miller. >> Thank you, councilmembers. My name is Hayden walker. I wear multiple hats but this afternoon I'm going to be talking about vision zero. I've been part of the grassroots effort calls vision zero atx. I think we can all agree that last year was a horrific record. We had 102 traffic deaths in the city and 30% of those were pedestrians. Generally, the rule of thumb is for every death there are about eight very critical life- altering injuries. So I know I think about that a lot, about my own children, and I would prefer to see a safer city in Austin. I think you also know the statistics about vehicular speed, that vehicles traveling 40 miles an hour or higher are likely to kill somebody. Someone has a 10% chance of being hit -- of living through being hit by a vehicle traveling 40 miles an hour and over that speed they don't really have any chance at all of surviving. We have a lot of streets that have speed limits of (202)020-1045 miles an hour so those people are really in danger. I think the draft action plan is great. I know there's been a lot of work on it but one of my concerns is that in the draft action plan, in the beginning, in the text, there's a lot of [4:24:34 PM] discussion of vehicle speed, how dangerous vehicles are when traveling at high speeds. There's great graphics but then when you look through the actual implementation guidelines there's hardly anything that addresses speed. I think there's one call for a speed study. And I know that speed can be a contentious issue but I think it's low-hanging fruit in a lot of ways for making our streets safer for a lot of people and a lot of cities in this country have implemented lower speed limits and reduced fatal rates so I think it's important to remember that. The plan itself says -- and I think it's a great point -- people will make mistakes. The transportation system should be designed those those -- so those mistakes aren't fatal. Thank you for your time. >> Kitchen: Thank you. Next speaker is Miller nuttle. Before you start I'd like to also say that our last speaker will be Michael -- Mike levy, so if he wants to come glop thank you, councilmember. I'm here in my capacity as a volunteer member of vision zero atx, a citizen group working to build grass roots support for a action plan. We have submitted to the members of the mobility committee a list of ten recommendations to strengthen the action plan as it stands now. You should all have a copy. If you don't I'm happy to follow up with a list afterwards. I want to echo a lot of her sent. And draw your attention to the first few items on the list. First of all, thank you and city staff for taking this on as a priority. There's a lot of moral urgency around the need to make our streets safer. People are literally dying on a weekly if not a daily basis and we need to do something about it. Some of the things we think would make the plan strong ser adds metrics to all of the action items. Right now there are Numbers attached to a lot of those action items which makes it really hard, obviously, for budgeting purposes, to hold ourselves accountable to this plan, to come back and make [4:26:35 PM] sure that we're actually setting an ambitious agenda and measuring progress over time. So that's the number 1 thing we'd like to see and with that an estimate of the costs of doing these things so that y'all have an informed -- so y'all can be informed in your decision-making about what are prioritized to actually make our streets safer, as well as the cost of inaction. I think it's important to consider what the costs are of leaving our streets in a condition where people are dying on a regular basis, whether that's ems costs, damage to the roads, et cetera. Those are important to which. Happy to answer any other questions about the ten items we submitted but those are some of the big priorities we'd like to see generic thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> Kitchen: Mr. Levy? Go ahead. >> Hi, Mike levy. I'm on the public safety commission and public safety commissions representative on vision zero task force, met on Monday. We have some primary -- five primary recommendations that could have an immediate impact on reducing fatalities, but they need to be adopted sooner rather than later. One, obviously, is more aggressive enforcement/prosecution. There's a shortage of officers and, therefore, the council obviously would need to add to overtime. This is real important, which is changing the conversation from just high-speed roadways to high-speed roadways and neighborhoods and secondary streets. I think every neighborhood has [4:28:36 PM] been asking for more enforcement. It's just not there. Our neighborhood association set, okay, we went ahead and collected money for a constable at 60 bucks an hour and the speeds that they're catching these people at are horrible. There are a lot of tickets. The third thing was impounding cars for drivers that have either suspended or no license because we figured out that 34% of all of these drivers are responsible -- 34% of fatalities involve drivers who don't have either a valid driver's license or a suspended drivers line license -- license. We want to continue the vision zero task force but we think it's very, very important to move it back to planning because there is obviously a conflict. You read the report, and you see dollars going to engineering -- to transportation, dollars going to transportation, dollars going to transmission, and a lot of those dollars are for jobs they should be doing any way. There's a thing I opened all speeches, with the reason we study history, you're supposed to learn from it, and when you study the history of man from the very beginning of time you learn one profound truth, which is from the beginning of time, beginning of man, there's never ever been a bad short speech, bad short you'lly or bad short sermon. That also applies to reports. This is 64 pages, a good report in the private sector, this could have been ten pages it doesn't say anything. There's no strong recommendations. There's a kitchen sink lives bullet points and there's no filter. There is no ranking priority. It really doesn't say much. We had to wade through it and finally we wound up using our experience from the inception of the committee to come up [4:30:37 PM] with these recommendations, which we think are good ones and we hope that council will view them favorably and in the short-term because they can have an immediate effect. Thank you y'all very much. >> Kitchen: Thank you. Wait, we have a question. Councilmember Gallo. >> Gallo: Thank you. Thank you for being here and thank you for the information that you passed out. I just want to make sure I understand the yellow piece of paper. >> Yellow one is, again, suspended -- that was provided by A.P.D. But after that sheet was presented to us, they were able to come back with some additional statistics that say 34% of all fatalities involves drivers who either have suspended or no license. We took out of an initial recommendation uninsured motorists because there was no nexus that we could prove between fatalities and lack of insurance. >> Gallo: So as I'm reading this, under the no driver's license, it talks about 2100 collisions occurred with drivers that did not have a driver's license. Am I reading that correctly? >> Yes, ma'am. >> Gallo: That is the highest number of all the different descriptions of collisions. So what I'm understanding also is that right now, if a driver is stopped and they either have a suspended or no driver's license, the car is -- they're just allowed to drive off? >> With some exceptions. Fortune, who has been a member of the task force and has worked really hard and has a good group and they're constantly massaging the Numbers, he came back with a far more important number. 34% of all fatalities involve an unlicensed or a suspended [4:32:38 PM] licensed driver. Is that correct? >> Yes, sir. >> That's commander fortune there. >> Gallo: Thank you. So I think I have a question of A.P.D. Then, please. >> Kitchen: We're going to have a briefing. Could we hold the question for A.P.D. Until after the briefing? >> Gallo: Sure, absolutely. Thank you. >> Hang on. Before you go, though, this begs the question, where is the driving under the influence? >> That's a completely separate thing. We were simply viewing the driver's license factor. Obviously, dwi is a big deal. That comes under enforcement, you know, more enforcement is going to yield a safer street. >> Zimmerman: I thought it would be fledbly helpful for context purposes to see where wis falls in with -- in text. >> Yes, sir, you're right. But we were looking at the driver's license factor only. Is that it? Thanks. >> Kitchen: If we could have our presentation now. >> Good afternoon, councilmembers, and mayor. Commander fortune. I'm over the Austin police highway enforcement command, we're going to do a presentation with Jim dale from transportation and Francis from planning and zoning. Today's presentation I'll quickly try to go through because I know we're running out of time here. We're going to go over the problem. The oversight of the vision zero action plan, what the next steps are and any questions we can answer for you. Austin has an average going back since 1985 we've been keeping these statistics, 64 people die in flashes an average year. If -- crashes in an average year. This goes back to 2004 giving you a overview, three-year rolling average, peaks and valleys there and last year [4:34:39 PM] the the highest, 102, 1986 was the previous high, when we had 81. So we had obviously a big population jump since then but last year was 102 which did break all the records. Who is affected when you're looking at who is disproportionately, the people walking, biking, riding mechanics, they're approximately -- motorcycleses, 6.5% of the population, driving or riding those bicycles or people walking, biking, riding motorcycles count for less than 7%, 6.5. You look to the pie chart on the right there, but over half of all those traffic deaths were the pedestrians. And if you look at the amount of people, they died, 102 last year, 29% were the pedestrians, 15% were motorcyclists, 2% bicyclists and over on the left 54% were people in motor vehicles. I think this is what councilmember Zimmerman was talking about, when we're looking at key characteristics, the top portion says 61%, we compiled this January 8. It's actually gone up to 64%. We do get toxicology reports that come in several months later from the medical examiner's office so that number 1 has actually gone up, meaning 64% of all the traffic fatalities were impaired, those say 61 but it is 64. 33% involve speeding, 28% involve the pedestrian, failure to iole five yield right- of-way and that's where Mr. Levy talked about 34% drivers involved in fatal crashes either had a suspended or no driver's license. 33% involved no seat belt, 35% had no helmet if they were motorcyclists and 43% occurred on high use roadways. And then the other factor would be -- kind of goes along with the intoxication and just lack of visibility, 45% of [4:36:40 PM] those fatalities occurred between midnight and 6:00 A.M. I'll pass the presentation over to Francis Reilly with planning and zoning. >> Thank you. So like smoking or seat belt use, traffic deaths and injuries are public health problems. Similar to seat belt use or smoking we also need to address this by racing awareness, changing regulations, enforcing it and building safety into our design. These are the ideas that are included in the imagine Austin amendment that y'all passed back in October. And I'd like to go very briefly now through an overview of the action plan starting with the vision. It sets safe mobility as the top priority, and it really works on continuing the greater collaboration that we've started with this task force and are continuing. It's requiring a multi-pronged approach that really addresses all aspects of our roadways from land use transportation, infrastructure. The thing I'd like to call attention to here is especially is equity, though. We've had a lot of good discussions surrounding equity, when you look at who is affected by traffic deaths, you know, as commander fortune talked about, it's people walking, biking and riding motorcycles. You also see disproportionate number of minorities and low-income folks affected as well. So these are areas where we would really like to address. [4:38:41 PM] The plan goes over past safety efforts. You know, Austin's been addressing traffic safety for quite a while from, you know, everything from three-foot passing, you know, the complete streets policy a couple years ago, you know, and then talking about sort of how we've gotten to where we are today with vision zero, from its origin in the pedestrian advisory council and then the work of the task force over the past year. Austin joining the U.S. Dot's mayor's challenging for -- challenge for safer people, safer streets. Very briefly, going over sort of the big four areas of recommendations -- and I'd note that we've gotten a lot of feedback in these areas. And so this is something that we're really working to revise as well. We've heard that the content is really good, but maybe reframing this a bit. But really -- >> Kitchen: Let me -- I'm sorry, let me ask you a quick question. >> Sure. >> Kitchen: So the thinking is that what you're presenting to us today is a final report except for the fact that you've gotten some feedback, for example, the feedback we've gotten today from the folks that are speaking to us, and that you'll be incorporating some feedback and then presenting a -- to the full council a final? Is that the thinking? >> Yes. Absolutely. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> So, yeah. So what we've heard is the content is all there. >> Kitchen: Yeah. >> We're reframing it a bit and, you know, to Mr. Levy's point, hopefully trimming this down a bit. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> So those four big areas are focusing on our hotspots and dangerous behaviors, creating [4:40:44 PM] awareness, using data more effectively, collecting data better and really using that to target our resources. And then developing a vision zero program within the city, as well as continuing the task force. So when we look at where crashes are occurring over -- using the data from 2010 to 2014, we see that some clear patterns emerge. You know, there is that light up on this map zooming in a little bit, where we see the most injuries and specifically incapacitating injuries and that's where people are traveling the most so that's not unexpected. But then when we see where people are dying, especially people walking or biking, they tend to be on -- out from the city center on higher-speed roadways. So this is something that really, you know, we need to address through a imitation combination of education, targeted enforcement and engineering, as well as really looking at our land use. This is something that ties in well to codenext, for instance. Break down the factors behind fatal and incapacitating crashes, we boiled this down to about six key dangerous behaviors. And I'd note that, you know, it's important that we along at these as the interplay between human error and design. But, you know, things like improper movements, like lane changing, just driver inattention or distraction, failure to yield right-of-way, speed, alcohol and drugs and failure to stop. You know, this makes up almost [4:42:45 PM] 80% of our fatal incapacitating crashes, where something was recorded. >> Gallo: I ask a question? So having heard the statistics of the 34% of fatal crashes include a driver that is driving without a license or one that's suspended, how does that fit into this circle? I mean, that is an activity that's causing a large percentage -- >> So that's not captured in this same data. That wouldn't have been the cause of the crash. But it is something that relates certainly to this. So it's -- we could -- we can certainly present back on that. >> Gallo: Okay. Thank you. >> Sort of looking at example actions in the plan, you know, broken down into short, medium, long-term actions, and grouped into enforcement, engineering, education, and policy, and this is, again, an area where we're going back and we're revising, you know, what the organization could look like, we're working with the task force members and really incorporating feedback from the boards and commissions we've been to, as well as members of the public. The second action is really to develop vision zero media campaign, an educational campaign, to really raise awareness about the magnitude of the problem. I mean, I think if you were to poll people on the street, most people would probably be unaware that 102 people lost their lives last year. That's a tremendous number, and it's something that really deserves a lot of attention. Also raising awareness of dangerous travel behaviors, you know, going back to that chart of those top six behaviors, you know, how many [4:44:46 PM] people go a little over the speed limit, you know, on a regular basis and yet when we're talking about -- especially injuries to people walking or biking, a couple miles per hour over the speed limit can be the difference between life and death. Really focusing on that, reaching out to our vulnerable user groups and areas, you know, like I said earlier, you know, areas with lower-income or minority populations who are disproportionately included in this too and we're including in this process. With that I'll hand this over to Jim. >> Gallo: May I ask a question before you do that. You've done a great job. Thank you for the statistical information. >> I'm sorry. >> Gallo: Sorry. I was applauding your efforts on all of this. I think it's really wonderful. I've got a question. Is part of the thought process -- I'm look at your maps that show hotspots and dangerous behaviors. Is part of the process of this conversation evaluating where we have low risk, moderate risk, high risk, and we base that on actual fatality data information on a geographic basis so that -- you know, we talk about in this community often one size does not fit all with our policy decisions. So is that analysis part of the process with what you were doing? I mean, I see red areas that would be high risk and then I see a lot of green areas that may be low risk. I just want to understand if what is moving forward here is going to be a policy that really understands and comprehends that there perhaps are different plans for different levels of risk. >> Mm-hmm. Yes. So, you know, this action plan is really intended to be a start at this. Something that Jim will cover [4:46:46 PM] more, you know, in other communities that have adopted vision zero action plans, vision zero policies and vision zero action plans, they've also then gone and looked at things like, you know, New York has developed pedestrian safety action plans for each of the Burroughs and that gets in at a much finer grained look at it and starts to recognize the key differences between different parts of town. >> Gallo: Okay. Thank you for that. >> All right. Jim dale, assistant director for transportation department. We'll wrap up really quickly here. So just really quick, on the data side, very important aspect of our plan is that we need data not only to target what's happening out there on the street, what are the behavior, what are the locations where we have those problems. So we can address those with actions that we can take. But then also that feedback loop to say, all right, we implemented these actions. How well did we do? We need to come back and reevaluate and do that continuous improvement process. Develop the vision zero programs, what we're working on right now, continuing that, keeping that going. Just a couple statements here about establishing the program, continuing the vision zero task force has been -- the task force has been very instrumental in getting us to this point. We will produce an annual report card on how well we are doing. We've heard comments about as far as so forth and we want to include targets as well as cost estimates. We've been asked to include cost estimates for these actions. We will do that. And we will be coming back on an annual basis to the mobility committee and council with that report card. Next steps. We're taking in that feedback. We've heard previously make sure to go through boards and commissions, get feedback and incorporate that. We're in that process right now. We see that our last -- we'll see it in the next slide. We have been asked to provide cost estimates for all the actions, we're in that process too. Seeking funding through the budgeting process. We are in the budgeting process right now for fy17, we [4:48:47 PM] have asked departments to look at the recommendations and see what they can include in this next year's budget planning cycle. Very importantly we have over 100 recommendations in the report and priority advertising those, which ones do we do first. How to participate. Did I jump ahead here? How to participate, we're looking for feedback to come back to vision zero at austinitself.gov. There's a number of things that can be done now on engineering, education enforcement side and there's that piece we ask of the public, they're a very important constituent in this, reducing fatalities and serious injuries in crashes and changing some of the -- helping them -- have them help us in getting to this vision zero goal. And just one -- wanted to mention some of the steps we see, taking in comments we have the utc presentation next week. We'll get comments there. After that then we'll focus on wrapping all the comments back into the report. Coming back, at least how we're planning right now, come back to the mobility committee. Once we get that feedback to share in a with you in some nice format and then after that, then go to council. >> Kitchen: When you come back to us, it would be helpful if you can identify the recommendations that are policy issues that need the council -- that may need the council to act on. Also of course it sounds to me like you will come back with information around costs so we can understand the costs of implementation too. >> Yes. >> Kitchen: Thank you. Okay. Are there any further questions or -- go ahead, councilmember Gallo. >> Gallo: I had the question initially about being surprised that when somebody is pulled over -- particularly with the fact that it sounds like it's 34% of the fatalities are with drivers that are not -- don't have a license or the license is [4:50:48 PM] suspended so I really want to understand our policy for when a driver is pulled over and is found to be without a driver's license what happens. >> Right now, the policy is really not there. The policy is just like anything else we would deal with the traffic incident. A few -- yearsing what I was a police officer in the early '90s, mid '90s if you stopped someone while their drivers was suspended it's automatically a class D misdemeanor, automatically a arrest if was not something could you -- you had to make an automatic arrest and the vehicle usually got impounded. Somewhere along the line there was a shift in how people drive without a license -- or there's a difference, there's no DL, people with no driver's license and then there's license suspended, meaning you have it and it's been suspended for one reason or another, could be an insurance issue or could be a series of hazardous issues, driving while intoxicated, massive amount of moving violations that are hazardous. The state started applying a lot of surcharges and point systems. It got very convoluted, a lot of people were having their license suspended. I think the department made a decision somewhere along the lines, people were looking at driver's license as a -- it is, technically the license is not what kills you. It's the person operating the vehicle, the vehicle ends up killing you. In these instances these were nonviolent offender, so instead tying the jail up with people getting arrests they would just issue the citations. There's nothing in policy that says that the vehicle has to be impounded currently if the person is stopped. So the officer can still issue a citation or physically take the person to jail but usually the option has been now, because it doesn't say it's required, most officers probably end up do giving a citation for no driver's license or driving with a [4:52:49 PM] while license suspended. As far as the vehicle being towed it hasn't been completely tracked if that's happening all the time but normally that's probably not what is occurring. What we want to, do we've made recommendation to executive staff and there would be a city ordinance to change on impounding a vehicle when somebody not have a valid driver's license or no driver's license. We've made those remittances to executive staff, and they have them now as a policy recommendation plus the city ordinance violation that we are -- or amendment we worked with city legal on. >> Gallo: Well, it just seems like with the statistics show that 34% of the fatalities are with drivers that don't have licenses or licenses suspended, that is a place that we need to start that policy discussion. >> Yes. It's been tracked at least for the last five years that I know of and I took over the highway enforcement command a years ago and it's been somewhere between 24% to 29% and this year obviously it was 34%. So we -- taking that over and getting involved with vision zero and coming up with identifiers besides impairment that was one of the major factors that kept showing up over and over so we definitely were trying to address it through our policy recommendations and an ordinance change. >> Gallo: Okay. Thank you for bringing that to our attention. >> Kitchen: Councilmember Zimmerman. >> Zimmerman: Question on the no driver's licenses. Can you offer an educated guess if you don't have the statistics on how many of those people might not be in the country legally? That's why they don't have a driver's license? What do you think that percentage is? >> The police department does not track whether someone is a ken or not a citizen so there's no way to find that out. I believe they have demographic information but I don't have that. It is normally higher on the minority side when it comes to having no driver's license, and I believe that Francis Reilly said there's some disparity or could be issues so I do know that normally when it comes to no driver's license or it comes to an invalid driver's license it's not indicated that every person is a minority but there is a larger percentage that [4:54:49 PM] some of those people end up being people of -- in a minority group. But whether they're a citizen or not a citizen we don't know that, sir. >> Zimmerman: Well, that was my question. Whether you're from Europe or from Latin America or from Africa, wherever you come from, you're either in the country legally or not. If you're not in the country legally, wouldn't it shall -- it's much more difficult to get a driver's license or people just don't get them. So I think that needs to be investigated. Maybe that's part of my favorite part of city politics, is how agendas conflict. Right? Agendas conflict. Once -- we want to be a sanctuary city and -- in some policy terms but then that leads to people driving without licenses. Well, you can't arrest them because they don't have a license because it might turn out they're in the country illegally when they go to jail. You see how these agendas conflict with each other? I want to say one thing about the point of equity, when a car runs into a bicycle or something. That's not equity. That's physics. Want you to understand the difference between evening wit and physics. Physics are physics. They're not equitable, they're not inequitable. They're physics. >> Kitchen: Councilmember Garza, did you want to say something? >> Garza: We got a list of ten recommendations from folks who were involved in the vision zero task force. Wanted them implemented in the plan and I was wondering if you had them. I think it was -- >> I'm not sure if we have the same list. We have received a list of recommendations from vision zero atx but I'm not sure what the -- >> Garza: Okay. I guess I would just ask, when [4:56:49 PM] you -- obviously these were made by people very close to -- very involved in the process so if we could -- maybe when the plan is presented, lay out which of these were put in the plan and then if -- if they're not, an explanation of why we couldn't -- you know, why they weren't put in the plan. >> Kitchen: Okay. Yes, if y'all will move forward and then address that also. All right, thank you all very much. >> Thank you. >> Kitchen: Councilmembers, we're now gonna -- did you have a vision zero question? Councilmembers, we're now going to move to items seven and eight and we will move forward with those together. You know, last week, on -- last Thursday, we stood up together and we made an announcement about transportation projects that we had planned and fund -- that our staff had -- that were already funded and planned for 2016. And we said at that press conference and we acknowledged that there was a lot of work happening, a lot of work would be happening this year, but there was much more work to be done. And we mentioned then that we would be kicking off a public conversation about future transportation projects, major transportation projects, and how we might fund them. So that's -- that's what our discussion is today, to start that process, to talk about, well, what is -- what are the future projects that we need to identify that we want to move -- that we -- and by "We" I mean the community that, community considers to be major transportation projects that we need to move forward with funding. The question being what do we do next and how do we pay for it? So we're going to begin that conversation we have a briefing about the mobility 35 project because the projects related to I-35 are part of our consideration. We also have a briefing [4:58:51 PM] about proposed approaches for public conversation and public input process. So we have a number of speakers that want to speak on this, but before I do that I want to see if anyone on the dais wants to say anything. I think the mayor -- did you want to make any comments? >> Mayor Adler: I will hold my comments. >> Kitchen: You want to hold your comments? We have a few speakers, I'll ask you to go ahead and speak on both of these items, if you can. I think we had is one person, Mr. Bunch, who you signed up for both seven and eight. If you're comfortable with you can speak to both of them at this time. If you prefer to wait you can just speak to seven. So let's see. Let me start with -- we had Scott Morris and then bill bunch. Is no? Okay, thank you. Bill, did you have anything you wanted to say? >> I'm going to pass and listen. >> Kitchen: Then we have Dave Dobbs. Did you want to speak on seven? >> Thank you, madam chairman and mayor Adler and councilmember pool and councilmember Renteria, thank you for joining us. I'll try to be very brief because the situation on I-35 intuitively is understood by most of us who drive it everyday, is to be -- is impossible. It can't be fixed. And the Texas transportation institute says it can't be fixed. There's a mobility study done in 2013 that basically says in its key findings that you're going to have a multimodal approach and that even that probably won't do a whole lot. And if you look at that from that point of view I think it's foolish to put local money in trying to fix a problem that is a problem with state highway department. Widening roads is a situation that simply leads to what Mr. Bunch pointed out, people are on the road longer to [5:00:51 PM] get less places, and that's a formula for traffic congestion. You have to do something else in the city. You have to realize that a city is a place where streets are for people. And that's the equity issue. You have to realize that bicycles and pedestrians and transit riders have to share that street. And if you build constantly wider streets and constantly trying to move more and more people, what you end up with is traffic sewers. So I urge you to look at I-35 with a lot of skepticism and remember that the Texas A&M transportation institute is the think tank of the highway department. And if they say the situation in effect -- in so many words is hopeless, then I think you should worry very much about whether you should put any local money toward it. Thank you. >> Kitchen: Thank you. Sinclair black? >> Mayor and councilmembers, thank you for this opportunity. I'd like to first ask you to consider this concept of mobility issue and rename is a little bit and call it access and mobility because those two things are quite different. Access is about walking it's about sidewalks, trails, bake lanes and street use. Mobility on the other hand is for medium travel for medium and long distance travel. One of those, access, is the purview of the city of Austin and the other is the purview of txdot. And I propose a joint venture where each takes its responsibility seriously and separately with a compact about how to cooperate and make it [5:02:53 PM] all happen seamlessly into the future. You might be surprised to know that I'm here about reconnect Austin. Hopefully you're not. It's a concept for separating mobility on the depressed I-35, mobility issues. In the main lanes in a depressed I-35. And that's the responsibility of txdot, clearly. On the other hand, we inventing the corridor, and I do mean the whole corridor, by extending the grid with great streets, great bridges, connecting great neighborhoods and creating great neighborhoods, and in the end creating an economic development engine the likes of which we've ever seen in Austin. And so I appeal to you to consider the nuances of this proposed bond issue very carefully. I think that the city could contribute and support and cooperate in a joint venture agreement that would produce the best possible results for everybody. Shorter three times for the mobility aspects and a much more vigorous and rich environment leading to a better quality of life and a healthy economy. Thank you very much. >> >> Our next speaker is roger baker. And after roger we have David king. Roger? >> Hi there. I made up a leaflet that David Dobbs was talking about about the Texas transportation institute, which told us that we can't really fix I-35. And Linda took some [5:04:56 PM] excerpts from that, and I'll pass this out in a minute. I have almost enough, but I didn't expect this many council people to show up, but I'm really impressed that you're coming down here to listen. Basically the most dramatic finding is that I-35 congestion is fairly intractable in response to adding capacity in the scenarios tested. Basically traffic swamps the I-35 corridor in the Austin region in 2035. In addition, peak period congestion is so bad that it extends into the off-peak periods, for example, as late as 10:00 P.M. And as we all know, I-35 is basically filled with vehicles to the max and all you do is expand the hours of that maximum capacity to longer and longer periods. Anyway, here's what the tti said about it. And just a few additional comments. I think if you're going to go to a bond election for this thing, you need to sell the project as a community benefit and I think you need to quantify the congestion relief. I've spoken to campo about fixing I-35 and I asked how do we determine the cost effectiveness if we're going to spend all this money, and I believe it's largely txdot that's creating the desire to fund I-35, but [5:06:56 PM] what are we getting in terms of congestion relief? I don't think we'll get anything. And this tti study sort of demonstrates that. But I believe that it's going to be hard to sell bonds without any kind of cost benefit analysis. And campo apparently can't provide that cost benefit analysis. So I think what you need to do is have kind of a community benefit, you know, a plan that you can sell that way. You know, I think covering over I-35 is a good idea, but I think the community that lives in Austin is going to want to see some benefit -- [buzzer sounds] >> Kitchen: You can finish your sentence? >> More than just adding more cars, which txdot is focused on. >> Kitchen: David king. And after David is Brendan whitstruck. >> Thank you, chair and vice-chair and councilmembers and mayor. I think -- I'm a little bit send about spending a lot of money on I-35 to add more lanes or depressing the lanes and it sounds like a very expensive effort that won't help with congestion as all and maybe cost billions of dollars. I'm concerned about making that type of investment for those kind of changes. I think straightening the road over lady bird lake and straight ening out that dip in the road could get traffic moving through a little faster. Things like that I think are good to spend Ms. Houston that. But I think that we should focus our money on other projects, mobility projects that will help the city directly like a bond package for sidewalks and bicycle lanes and promoting that. Let's invest more in that. And not so much in building new lanes of [5:08:57 PM] highway traffic. And the quarter cent project I think is a good project. I'm glad that we had some projects that we could target quickly and if we could fill in gaps in the meantime. I wish we had another - - that strategy on the table. This one goes away, the $20 million will be gone before you know it, and where else? I think we could have that kind of strategy in addition to a bond that would help us make a big dent in our sidewalks and our bicycle infrastructure and I think investing in that right now and putting our attention on that would be real beneficial to our community. Thank you very much for listening to our comments. >> Kitchen: Next after Brendan will be Lauren Chriswell. >> I was nervous when I thought I was just talking to four of y'all. Thank you for being here. My name is Brendan. I'm a designer and co-chair of the north central I-35 neighborhood coalition two. In zinc formed to share information between north central neighborhoods and be shown as a stakeholder in that process group. We pushed for east-west -- engagement in this process. In December we passed the resolution in support of the long range vision for I-35 without upper decks, and we reached out to y'all, the city council for your support a city of Austin led, independent study of the upper decks that assesses for the first time the removal and share our opposition to the current txdot plans for the upper decks in the absence of such a plan. The upper decks are a visual, physical, economic and psychological barrier that discourages [5:10:57 PM] bicycle, pedestrian mobility, disconnects neighborhoods, depresses property values, inhibits economic development, subjects nearby residential and commercial levels to elevated noise, water -- air and water pollution. As such we are antithet kel to the Austin comprehension plan and for a healthy, sustainable, compact and connected city. At the same time nationally and internationally cities are removing large outdated transportation infrastructure at an unprecedented rate and they are reaping tangible benefits to economic development, mobility and quality of life. We would argue that Austin should be at the vanguard of this trend in city building mobility and we believe this is a real opportunity for us to do so. We believe that funding for this study should be a priority of any 2016 mobility bond and I love Sinclair's access and mobility. Seeking toaster local control over this process, let's get some skin in the game and build -- start crafting this highway in the image of our city and not the other way around. So I am here on behalf of nsyny to ask for this study for this study to include at a very minimum the social, environmental and economic impacts of the he veteran actual removal of the upper decks through north central and I'm asking that this study be included in the mobility bond. And further I'll conclude by saying that as a citizen I am here to voice my support for the potential we have here in front of us right now, for the potential of some of the other projects I think you're going -- ideas that you've heard today that I think you're going to hear and putting together a collaborative, holistic bond vision for I-35 that serves the city of Austin. So we look forward to working with y'all -- with y'all -- [buzzer sounds] Thank you. >> Kitchen: Thank you. Next is Lauren. And then after Lauren our last speaker is Miller nuttle. [5:12:58 PM] >> Thanks to all of you for the opportunity to speak with you today. My name is Lauren Chriswell, I'm a resident of central Austin and I'm a member of the grassroots organization reconnect Austin. Given the discussion of a mobility bond in November I would like to share some of my concerns about the prospect of local funding for I-35. I'm in support of Austin having a greater voice in the discussion of the I-35 corridor and how it will be redesigned under txdot's mobility 35 plan. However, I would posit it is clear to each of you that while the city and txdot may agree on what the mean challenges are, the solutions and the subsequent priorities of each of these actors are dissimilar. I-35 has a singular purpose to move as many vehicles as efficiently as possible. It is an environment that does not MIX well with the complexity of central Austin. On the elevated highway structure creates a barrier effect for other modes of travel that are more space efficient, more affordable and provide greater positive externalities for the city. We have adopted master plans that when implemented will create access to an active transportation network that sets forth goals in imagine Austin. The city has also initiated studies on several corridors to improve their safety and functionality for varied users. If we invest taxpayer dollars in redesigning our corridors and building out the active transportation infrastructure, we will not realize the full return on those investments if we don't consider how infrastructure, like an elevated 35, interacts with these networks. Perpetuating the barrier effect of I-35, diminishes the true benefits gained by human scaled streets, well connected sidewalks, urban trails, basic lanes and transit facilities. I hope that this committee and the full council helps to allocate our dollars best for mobility and accessibility. It is with consideration of how I-35 interacts with the surface by way of high speed main lanes, arterial like frontage roads and [5:14:58 PM] intersections with complex city streets. Because it bisects Austin, I-35 cannot be designed simply for cars and for through-put. Local funding for the I-35 corridor can and should help us realize local goals and magnify returns on the investments we make in other transportation projects. Thank you. >> Kitchen: Mr. Nuttle. >> Thank you, mayor, mayor pro tem. Where is the mayor pro tem? She's not here. Oh, members of city council, I appreciate the opportunity to speak before you today. I first of all want to thank y'all for taking bold action to address Austin's traffic crisis. It clearly warrants big ideas to solve the problems that we're facing so I really appreciate your leadership on this and I want to speak up encourage you all to adopt as holistic a mobility package as possible. I think a central tenet in that holistic mobility package is based around active transportation and when I say active transportation I mean things like sidewalks, for instance, east Austin's historic sidewalk apps, like lanes, urban trails that are really meant for use for everybody in Austin, and I think we have two great plans in the form of the bicycle master plan and the sidewalk master plan, which is currently being updated, that are close to being shovel ready and present a really holistic vision for how we can start to convert a lot of car trips to active transportation modes. I won't belabor all the benefits of bicycling and walking. One is that walking and bicycling are obviously the most affordable means of transportation available to austinites today. And in fact, 40% of the people who report bicycling as their principal mode of transportation in the census make less than $25,000 a year. So this is a form of transportation that's used by people who don't have a choice but to ride a bike or use walking and bicycling to connect to public transportation. I think this is a social justice issue as well as it is a mobility issue. Second, I think funding the bicycle master plan and a good chunk of the [5:17:00 PM] sidewalk master plan, something like the high priority sidewalks that are listed in the plan, would give you all an opportunity to deliver on the promise of neighborhood plans. If you review any úneighborhood plan plan in Austin, they're sidewalks, urban trails, it's one of the common thread that stitches together every neighborhood plan. I think funding these big ambitious bike and swack plans give you an ability to deliver concrete improvements to your district that I think will build on projects that the quarter cent initiative funded. And finally I'll just close. I'm glad to hear that there will be a suggestion about a robust input process over the next several months. Bike Austin is happy to assist in that effort however is needed and I encourage y'all to have an in person discussion as well as an online discussion on is people can contribute in the way that's most convenient and available to them. Thank you. >> Kitchen: Thank you. We will now move to our presentations. We have two presentations from our staff. One specific to mobility 35 project and another more specific to key off our discussion on the public process. So we'll start with I-35. I don't know who is here to present on that, but before you start we have some special guests. We have some boys here from the Austin troop 5, if you guys would raise your hands. I think we can probably tell who you are. [Laughter]. So I understand that you guys are with one of the oldest troops in Texas, nearly 100 years old, is that right? >> Yes, ma'am. >> Kitchen: Yes. And you are working on your citizenship and the community merit badge, is that right? So you're here to listen today. So we are talking about traffic. And we are talking about what do we want to fix about traffic and how are we going to pay for [5:19:00 PM] it. So we're talking about I-35. How many of you ride on I-35 in cars? Okay. So you know we're talking about that. And you heard our previous speaker was talking about bicycles. How many of you you guys ride your bicycles to get around? Okay. We're talking about bicycles. Sidewalks, anybody walking to school? Okay, great. So thank you for being here. I hope that this helps you with your badge. And we can talk some more afterwards. Yeah, go ahead. >> Gallo: So we all love to see the younger generation here and you coming to be involved in the political process and the discussion, but every time we have our younger community come before us and come here, I always ask them to make a promise that when you turn 18 one of the first things you do that day after you get out of school, if you have school that day, is -- anyone know what would you do when you turned 18? You're older than 18. [Laughter]. >> But I have better advice. >> Gallo: You're going to register to vote. It's very, very important. And you are down here participating in the public process so I want everyone to raise your hand that you will agree to go register to vote as soon as you turn 18. Where are those hands? Come on. There you go. And if we have any parents here, then you see they're committed to that, so make sure that happens. Thank you. >> Zimmerman: Thank you. And I have some alternative advice. When you turn 18 you will either set yourself on a course for education to develop your skills and get into a profession or else you're going to develop some kind of vocational work skills. So the first thing you do is learn how to be useful, earn a craft or develop a profession, and be a productive member of society. The second thing you do is vote. >> Kitchen: All right. [5:21:09 PM] Let's see. >> Councilmembers, it is my sin is here to introduce our new txdot engineer Terri Mccoy. He's been a friend of the city for a long time and it really is special to have such a strong partner and Progressive transportation developer on our side. >> Thanks, rob, I appreciate that. Councilmember, I appreciate being classified as one of your staff members. I'm honored and actually that's the way that we want to be viewed. We want to be a part of the city. We want to be a partner to the city. So thank you for that honor. It is happen honor to be with you this afternoon and present information about mobility 35. This is not a new program. This is something that we've been working on for five years. We recognize I-35 is a program and we've been working together cooperatively for five years to try to develop some practical solutions to address the congestion that we're having. I-35 has the dubious honor of being the most congested corridor in the state of Texas in downtown Austin. Other sections of I-35 certainly are in the top 100, but that is in comparison to the the other corridors in the state and the delay and the frustration that people experience using those doppler radars. So we started and the intent and objective was for this to be a locally driven initiative. The city of Austin actually started the process, kick mattered the process with a million dollars of your own money and began looking at some concepts with the consultant and tried to get this ball rolling. Now that original study was from 290 to 71 so it's fairly localized, but it was a very, very good start and hats off to the city for getting that moving. [5:23:10 PM] Since that time the limits of the study have expanded. Now we've got a 65-mile section that extends all the way from Georgetown to San marcos. Again we mentioned earlier that we tried to take a very practical approach, really a very lean approach, a very respectful approach to developing I-35, an approach that was holistic and comprehensive. I've heard that term used this evening. And our goals have remained constant from the start. We want to optimize the existing facility and that reduces cost. We want to enhance safety, a major theme of this evening's presentations. We want to increase capacity. We are not planning to buy a lot of right-of-way for this project. And again that's -- that goes to being respectful to the community and recognizing the very valuable assets we have up and down I-35. We want to manage traffic better. Certainly we want to improve east and west connectivity. We want to improve compatibility with the neighborhoods and we want to improve pedestrian bicycle and transit user options. So if you think about trying to accomplish all those goals and the constraints that we have on I-35 and the challenges that we're trying to face, it's a challenging issue. I think that's a nice way to put it. Probably the most complicated project I've 'worked on in almost 30 years of experience in transportation. But it doesn't -- it won't work by itself. This project is developed with all of our regional partners, all of our transportation community partners and it works in concert with the other upgrades that we are performing to our system. Currently the enhancements are to plan and construct express lanes in Travis county. Those are similar to what is being constructed on loop 1 north. What is being considered on loop 1 south. That's intended to improve auto and transit time reliability. [5:25:11 PM] As you go from one end of town to the other. As I said earlier, we are working in Williamson and hays county. We are not as far along there as we are in Travis county. The transit options that we're considering, and these came from a planning and environmental linkage study, is is an express lane. It provides reliable transit options where buses run free. That's the primary focus here. The second option is with buses, again with transit running free, but again providing direct a access to park and ride facilities. We have really tried to do everything that we possibly can to improve operations to get people moving and it's not a pure capacity project. It's not a project that you might see in Houston or Dallas. We're not buying right-of-way. We're not building a bunch of lanes, but we are thinking, trying to think and approach this in a very, very smart fashion. To do that we're looking at all the entrance and exit ramps. One thing that I failed to mention, although I-35 is a north-south corridor that goes from Canada to Mexico, a lot of traffic we have in Austin is local traffic, traffic coming from Georgetown into downtown Austin or coming from San marcos into downtown Austin. Those are people and goods so that's trucks and cars both. So we're looking at exit and entrance ramps. It is incumbent upon us to provide good access to downtown. We're looking a collector distributor roads. Another word for those are intersection bypass lanes or frontage road bypass lanes as well. A lot of things that we're trying to do to get more traffic moving on I-35. We're looking at trying to address all the bottle necks that people experience on a day-to-day basis and I think anybody that drives I-35 can kind of single some of those out. We're looking to enhance [5:27:12 PM] conventional intersections. We're looking to apply innovative section intersections when that's possible and we talked about frontage road bypass lanes. We are including bicycle and peddle.s and components and that's challenging. As you look for -- as you consider constrained right-of-way it's tough to get that in there, but we're committed to doing the very, very best we can with that. We want to maintain east- west connectivity. That's been big. We'll talk a little bit about some of the outreach that we've had. But that's one of the messages that we've heard loud and clear as we've gone out and talked to people. We're actually adding a new connection across I-35 at 32nd. If you think at that location you have offset legs of 32nd street on so adding one more crossing on I-35. Looking at working smart as hard as we are working convention nationally, working smart in our minds includes traffic demand management so we are trying to minimize some of the peak by encouraging folks to stay out of the peak travel hours, considering alternative modes of transportation as well, but trying to reduce the number of people during the peak hours of I-35. And really the primary problem that we're trying to address are those peak hours. Those peak hours certainly continue to get longer and longer. But we're also looking at a traffic management -- transportation management system and so how can we manage the traffic that we have on I-35, not just build more lanes or improve intersections, but how do we manage the traffic? This is an area where we're cooperating with the city and the smart city's program as a way of thinking our way out of congestion issues as well. So we're really adopting everything in -- and the kitchen sink approach to I-35. This is just more of some of the things that we're doing here and I'm going to try to move pretty quickly. [5:29:14 PM] So the city of Austin has been an excellent partner with us on a lot of projects, but particular in this project we talked about the million dollars to kick start. The city contributed two million dollars for the planning and environmental linkage study that was done in 2014. So we continue to work together. Before the program actually started the city was a partner on the improvements that we made on -- to 51st street east of I-35. In Ben's term the gooseneck project and the city was a partner on that. The city has also agreed to contribute 9.2 million for the other side of I-35 as we improve the southbound direction of travel and the intersection at 51st street. So this is deliberate and intentional. We wanted this outreach process. We've had over three hundred meetings. We've adopted the mantra that we will meet with anybody any time and just about anyplace. There are some restrictions there. There are some places we simply can't go. We have talked to a lot of people and gotten a lot of input and the project has evolved over time as a result of that impact and that process that we've gone through. Here is a list of some of the people that we've talked to. Again, in my opinion we've been fairly successful. When rob and I started on this we had a million dollars, that was all we had. And we had a dream and we had a vision and so we just began working. And from that we've been able to develop a program of projects which we've never had in this region for I-35. And that's held us -- held us back from improving I-35 in many [5:31:16 PM] situations. The program of projects consist of projects that do have independent utility that we can clear environmentally as a result of the independent utility that we construct independently that can work and offer benefits in the short-term. A lot of those projects can be broken apart. Everything fits back together at the end of the day as part of an overall program. This slide is just showing you some of the projects that have been funded. Some of these through proposition 1, which is excess oil and gas tax revenues that was adopted by voters in 2014. So we have the project in Travis county to improve the area between stassney lane and William cannon drive and also to replace slaughter creek overpass for 10 million. We've got projects that were we're working on in 2016. Again, we've tried as best we can to prioritize, but also to offer distribution through all three counties in Williamson and hays county for a lot of good reasons, but we have projects in Williamson county, we have projects in Travis county. And one is oltorf street, 51st street project that we mentioned at 20 something million. And then we have a list of projects that will come online that will be ready to go to construction if funding is there, funding is [5:33:19 PM] available. That money is going primarily on I-35, three projects that are being funded with that. One is the 51st street project over and above the city's funding. The other is oltorf street project. And then partially funding the I-35 project that extends from rundberg to U.S. 290. There is still a funding gap there and we continue to work with all of our funding partners, including capital and trying to -- campo and trying to a capture all the funding streams and put them to the best use on I-35. Below is a list of future projects and huge at txdot is we've coordinated these projects and cleared these projects to get these projects ready to go. And never ever let the opportunity pass where there's funding. And we don't have a project ready to go. We're not going to let ourselves be in that position. This is too important. So I'll talk about the project at I-35 and 183, if you will. The major feature of that project is to construct direct connects on I-35 and 183. The charge there is to set 183 up as an alternate parallel facility to I-35. We talked about this project working in concert with other transportation upgrades in the region and that's one. So if you're able to build the direct connects that take southbound I-35 to southbound 183 without going through the intersection and then vice versa northbound 183 to northbound I-35, and then 183 south, the Bergstrom expressway project is constructed with direct connects to 71, then you really set yourself up for that to be a parallel alternate facility. That to be a reliever route, if you will, if we get to be able to do some construction downtown. These are all in your packets and I know we're [5:35:19 PM] short on time so I won't go through the individual projects other than to say the information is there. Certainly we talked about these projects fitting together. We've talked about these projects being able to be separated and built independently. That each one of them correct certain problems that we're facing. Correct, I'll say improve certain problems that we're facing at each location. So the thing that is impressive if you think about the existing right-of-way and the constraints that we have, in Travis county we're able to add 35% more lane miles between the frontage road so that's a major improvement. The metrics are stuff on this. To stay exactly what percentage improvement they'll be because the situation on I-35 evolves all through the day. Everyday is a little bit different. But again our approach is to make this the very, very best that we can. So if you look at downtown we're able to offer 52% more lane miles again between the frontage roads. These are the funding situations that we face. In Williamson county the total program is .8 billion. In Travis county it's 2 to 2.3 billion. The differential there is we are carrying two separate alternatives into the Nepa process. We're actually carrying three alternatives. We're carrying also what we're calling the modified existing, which basically rebuilds I-35 as it is today. The third alternative is depressing I-35 all the way from 12th street to Riverside. So the depressed alternative is certainly more expensive. That's what the 2.3 billion represents and why there's a differential there. In hays county the total price tag is estimated [5:37:20 PM] to be 1.5 billion. So I said earlier that I thought we had been very successful. We've gathered $300 million for funding on I-35. It's an enormous start and great progress from where we begin with why billion dollars. There's still a gap there. That gap should actually say four to 4.3 billion depending on the alternatives selected for downtown. The remaining Travis county portion is 1.8 to 2.1 billion. So that is really it in a nutshell and I know I've talked quickly. It's a big program. It's taken several years to get us to where we're at. We've tried to be as smart as we possibly can. We've tried to be as efficient as we possibly is. We've tried to be as remainful to the community as we possibly can. So with that, that ends my presentation. I'm happy to take any questions that you may have. >> Kitchen: Thank you very much. This is very, very helpful. Does anyone have any questions they'd like to ask? >> Renteria: When would you make that decision or are you still getting input on I-35 to lower it down to the two options that you have. Is there a deadline coming up on the decision to be made? >> I'm sorry. Your question is there a deadline? >> Renteria: Yeah, you're saying there's two options right now about I-35, about lowering it or keeping it and just modify the existing. Have y'all made a decision when you're going to make that? >> Well, and that's a great question and I appreciate you bringing that up. That goes back to where we're at currently. And we've initiated the environmental coordination process, the Nepa process. And we're doing that all the way through Travis county. After we have done through -- all the [5:39:20 PM] coordination, all the planning, all the feasibility study, then we begin our environmental coordination process. We've broken Travis county up into three parts. There's a north part that goes from 45 to 183. There's a central part that goes from 183 to Riverside. Then from Riverside to 45 southeast. We've associated the Nepa process for each one of those segments. So as we go through the Nepa process then what will come out is the recommendation or preferred alternative that will be the -- after we've evaluated each alternative the merits of each alternative and make sure that we've done everything and we've considered everything we need to consider. The timing on this, again, it's probably going to take us two years to get through the Nepa process downtown. So we're not here to make a decision on the alternative. What we're here is just to give you a status on the program and let you know that we're working through those issues. I hope that answers your question. >> Renteria: Yeah. Since you said it will be about two years, that's good enough. >> Kitchen: Could you clarify the Nepa process, that's the environmental process? >> The environmental coordination process that we go through. And so as we go through that we consider really a lot of different factors and making sure that we haven't forgotten something. That we've done due diligence on everything. That we've considered public input. There's just a lot that goes into that. I can break that out further if you want to. >> Kitchen: No, that's okay. I just wanted to clarify that that's the environmental process and so the question of depressing the lanes is a question of going through the environmental process first and then the alternativings of depressing or not depressing after that process is completed in about two years or so. >> Two yearsish. >> Kitchen: Councilmember pool. >> Pool: Thank you for the very helpful presentation. I'm really interested in [5:41:22 PM] the economic benefits of depressing the highway. I think it would be a real plus for our community. But I don't guess you're really the person to speak to that. >> And it is something that is considered from several different aspects. It's a big thing and, you know, it's a difficult concept to grasp, but txdot is concerned about the community and that's the reality here. So the economic benefits need to be considered. It's not something that we've neglected to address as we go forward. There's been some studies into that and I think that there will continue to be some studies into that. So the thing that I didn't talk about and not part of anything that we're addressing here tonight, but once you depress the main lanes of I-35 then you have the potential to build caps over I-35 and then when you do with the caps section, I think that's certainly a local determination, but that's what sets that up. >> Clyde Warren park in Dallas is a comparable situation. Once you've been able to depress the main lanes and you're able to cap then you can do a lot of great things with that. That leads into the economic development issue as well. >> Pool: And I recognize that would be a very complex project, but especially with the cap. And that is actually what I was thinking of. That would bring tremendous benefits to the community in many, many different ways, not just economic, but the quality of life for citizens of Austin. >> I agree. From my perspective, I'm excited about the potential of that and we've done a lot of work looking into that. One thing I didn't mention in talking about the public involvement and outreach process is we conducted a year long study workshop process, if you will, that we call the downtown stakeholders working group. And we looked at a lot of those different things and tried to [5:43:22 PM] resolve a lot of those issues. The caps were a common discussion. And from txdot camera's perspective, you know, personally I think it's a wonderful thing. From txdot's perspective it is an amenity so it's a local decision. It would be a local cost item to pick up. Fooled when you say -- >> Pool: When you say local are you saying whatever benefits we might have economically from capping it, that would not necessarily be part of the funding stream that would pay for the depression of the lanes? >> Well, it could again, but txdot is essentially saying that we cannot participate in the cost of constructing those caps since it is a true amenity. If that represents a funding stream that could go back into funding the program, that's certainly wide open. >> Pool: Thank you. >> Kitchen: Councilmember Houston, did you have a question? >> Houston: Yes, thank you so much. I appreciate you being here. I would suggest that between Sinclair black, his daughter, Beverly Silas and I, we've been working on I-35 for about a combined 150 years now. [Laughter] This is not a new issue for us. And those that live close to the interstate. I want to thank you for talking about east-west connectivity. Most people don't even consider that. Both 183 and toll road 130 are in district 1, and I guess my question is when we talk about reliever routes is there any way that we can say to truckers, use one of those reliever routes during rush hour traffic downtown? I've seen that in other states. >> Right. And what we're able to do is encourage that and we've done a few things as a transportation community. One of the big things was the completion of the manor expressway that really connects I-35 to 130, if you [5:45:22 PM] will. And I think that has big impacts for me driving. For me it has big impacts. But what we've done is we're offering travel time information to truckers so they know to make a decision, know it's quicker to go around than it is to go downtown. There are programs that are being considered that may buy-down tolls for truckers, again as an additional incentive. So all these things are being considered. It's tough for us to say truckers, you can't use I-35. One problem we have is a lot of the truckers have a destination, or origin downtown so those are trucks that deliver beverages to sixth street, do a lot of other things. They're part of the economic vitality of I-35 and a part of the problem that we face. >> Houston: Right. And one last question that is aligned with this is that as we begin to build out highway 130 -- 183, I'm sorry, 183 into a toll road, what is that going to do with that being a reliever route? >> I think it will have remarkable benefits. We talked about having a system-wide perspective on this and considering everything, the interconnectivity and the interchange between all the facilities. I think that's going to be a tremendous facility, as is manor expressway and moving traffic. So as we provide the connections between those two we really facilitate use of that alternate facility. As we communicate with the traveling public better and let them know that that's a good route to take, you know, not to come down I-35 because it's a mess. Go around. And that goes back to the traffic management system that we're trying to develop. So it's really -- it's incumbent upon all of us to be able to communicate better and to help people make better choices. >> Houston: Thank you. >> Kitchen: Mayor? >> Mayor Adler: I want to thank you also for coming down and visiting [5:47:23 PM] with us. I think the I-35 plan that's been presented, I want everybody to make sure, if I understand correctly, that that's -- it's not the standard txdot plan. This was the result of a pretty long and extensive community conversation that Ms. Houston and many others participated in. And we really appreciate the opportunity for our stakeholders and our community over an extended period of time to have participated in that. >> Absolutely. >> Mayor Adler: And I think it's also, when people talk about the I-35 plan, it attacks congestion with vehicles, but at the same time it's also about safety and transit and bike and pedestrian and reconnecting the city. So the plan hits all of those elements and not just traffic and cars. My hope is that the process that we initiate here, the stakeholder process over the next couple of months, has people focusing at least part of the attention on I-35 just because it's become the most congested part of the city, and at this point there seems to be a critical mass of people regionally, not just Travis county, but also Williamson county and hays county, as far west as cedar park where governments are kind of weighing in and saying, hey, let's all focus on something that we could be doing together. In that larger conversation, while I have you here, I just want to also reiterate and emphasize that if -- that some of the most attractive features of that project for me are the transit lanes in the middle, run as managed lanes, so that we can not only raise revenue, but so that we can also ensure that buses are [5:49:25 PM] going 45 miles per hour, with the thought that if the buses are always going that fast, even people that don't want to get out of their cars will enjoy the guy next to them getting out of his car and getting in the bus and that speed will encourage that to happen. And I also want to express interest in the depressed lanes. I think that's crucial for the city. My hope is that when we actually start looking at costs, it's not quite as big as it might seem, but we're really at the early stages of that. And I hope that one of the things that the community considers is the possibility of moving to the cap project at the same time that that construction project is happening. If that means that it gets done less expensively because the construction work is all being done at the same time or gets done more quickly because it's all happening at the same time. And then finally I just wanted to thank you and I want to thank our transportation staff and the regional partners who might be listening on the cooperative effort that went into this. It was wonderful to see. >> Thank you, mayor. Appreciate it. >> Kitchen: Councilmember Garza. >> Garza:, I wanted to make sure I understood the Numbers. On slide 20 is this -- is the 4.3 to 4.6 billion the total from slide 12 and 13? Or is slide 20 specifically for depressing I-35? >> Yeah. So it's a great question. Slide 20 is everything. So that's the -- that's doing everything that we're proposing on I- 35 for 65 miles from Georgetown to San [5:51:26 PM] marcos. >> Garza: So that's the total from slide 12? And maybe 13? >> And it gets confusing. It is the total of all of these, including the future projects. And that's where the big costs come in where you're able to do -- to do the big project downtown. And I can't swear that if you did -- if you grabbed a calculator that these were add up. They should add up and we'll confirm that they do. >> Garza: I've heard discussion about managed lanes. Is the managed lane option in these projects on slide 12? >> Yes. Well, -- yes or no. And we talked about the program of projects and the interoperability and the compatibility of each of these projects. So as we construct a project it is compatible with the next project and the next project, and they've been referred to as a string of pearls, if you will. So we can build part, we can build all. It just depends on the funding we have. But you won't have the transit option until you complete everything. That's when the managed lane comes online. That's when you will be able to have the reliable transit option from one end to the other. >> Garza: Okay, thank you. >> Kitchen: Councilmember Zimmerman? >> Zimmerman: I need to ask you this. I grew up in San Antonio, and in the '80's and '90's we had several huge highway expansion projects to I-35 to the north and interstate 10 that goes out to the northwest. And we had projects that increased capacity from four lanes to 10 lanes by building elevated ramps. What I find astonishing about Austin is that interstate 35 looks like it did in 1976 when I came up for a football game for San Antonio [5:53:28 PM] Churchill. I am just kind of astonished at how we've had all this growth and the city and other Normal cities are not only have one loop, but two loops or even three loops. Austin has no loop. And hasn't expanded the I-35 corridor. How is this possible over a period of 40 years? Is it because the city of Austin has refused txdot money and cooperation? I just can't path Tom how we've gotten to this point with nothing over a generation. Is there something to help me understand that? >> Well, it is a great question and I think it's probably several factors. I know on I-35 -- and I can comment on I-35 -- is that we've never developed a program that had a fair level of consensus. We've started a few times and then we've stopped because we don't have that level of support that's required to push things forward. I think our approach with this one is geared to avoid running into that brick wall, if you can. And I think the mayor referred to it properly that we're reaching critical mass. We have a lot of support so we're hoping that we'll be able to do this. In the previous slide you're exactly right. We're so far behind the curve. And one thing, again, hats off to city staff is that they've been great partners. And together that's how we address the problems. We can't do this individually. Txdot can't do it individually, so we rely on the partnerships we have with our transportation partners in our community, including rob and the city of Austin, various counties, campo, again, everybody has come together, coalesced and we're kind of working on this as a team. >> Kitchen: Okay. So let's -- let's move on now. Please, if you will stay with us, thank you very much, in case there are other questions, but we do have one more presentation. And let's hear from [5:55:28 PM] Mr. Goode on the last item. >> Houston: Chair kitchen, could we get a copy of his powerpoint, please, those of us that don't have it? >> Kitchen: Yes, we will make sure you have that. >> Certainly. Thank you, chair kitchen. If I may just take a quick moment and give you, if you don't know Mr. Mccoy's story, he actually retired from txdot and there was such an opportunity and was such a hue and cry we brought him back and thankfully he's such a great partner. Thank you, terry for round two. Appreciate that. He has been a great partner and is a great asset to this community. Chair kitchen, I also might want to mention you always have important mobility committee meetings, but this meeting has been pretty meaty. You've talked about traffic safety in our community with vision zero. We've talked about transit, high capacity transit over the central corridor. We've talked about a huge regional mobility project with 35. I've here to provide a capstone to that and also I would imagine it's not the end, but the beginning of the discussion where we move forward as a region from the council's standpoint of actions you could take to continue to work on mobility projects. Thank you for the opportunity to come do that. I'm come do that. I'm sure you hear every day that we need to have a transportation plan to address the mobility issues in our community. Obviously, with a full council being here today, you've expressed your support and interest in doing so. So, we appreciate that. We do need to move forward. One of the things that I wanted to quickly mention is just give a snapshot of what we've done -- the council has done recently. You're aware, working with your neighborhoods, you allocated the quarter-cent funding that we had remaining in that program, 21.8 million to sidewalks, signals, traffic signals, roadway projects in your neighborhoods, and we appreciate that and we'll be moving forward [5:57:28 PM] with that. You might also remember, then, that manager called for action about a year ago on the traffic congestion action plan talking about how we could improve traffic system operations with just the systems that we have in place today, traffic management center focus, you know, the don't block the box was a successful campaign that we continue in working on the events traffic management system through rob spillar. He also suggested to start a conversation on providing or freeing up additional capacity for the corridor plans that we've already done, the key intersection work, regional transportation -- you've heard of one project today, there are many more in the region we need to continue to focus on. And we also mentioned that you have funded the strategic mobility plan for transportation, launching to develop what we think as a region, the city of Austin, what we need to be focused on the next 20 years that will also feed into the campo plans as we move forward. And you've also funded a look at new development through the transportation impact fees to ensure that growth is paying for growth as we move forward. You funded in the '15 and '16 budget improvements at high- crash locations, for example, on palmer lane, system improvements, construction in many different projects, local area, traffic management, Howard lane extension, street reconstructions, I won't read the rest of that list, but, thank you for funding that. As you all recall or know that there are many master plans that tee up these projects as we move forward. The sidewalk master plan, we'll do an update of that in the near future. Urban trails, bicycle master plan. We've done preliminary engineering reports on many corridors. We have detailed designs going on the corridors that you have listed, Lamar, 51st street. We have construction-ready projects on neighborhood street [5:59:29 PM] collectors, Howard Lazarus, through the public works department, continues to provide our community. There are always ongoing mobility needs. I wanted to just mention a history from 1988 to 2014. The voters have authorized over $1.5 billion of work in our community. 638 million, over 40% of that, have been towards transportation and mobility. So we have been working throughout the community and throughout the region to provide transportation projects. But I think we'll ask the question -- I'm sure you're going to ask the question -- have we done enough. I'm sure every one of us as we're stuck in traffic, and your constituents are calling frequently, the answer is probably no. We still need to move forward. So we've done a very quick analysis of some needs. If I don't say this five or six times today, I've not done my job. This is very preliminary. We know there are needs we didn't attack and address, and haven't listed. But this is just an idea about the huge need we have in our community. And we -- without much work, came up with over $4 billion of needs. And this doesn't even include many of the regional projects on the list. The areas that we focused on, very quickly, regional mobilities, projects like 35, mopac south, 360. You know all the projects that your constituents deal with every day. Corridor mobility, I'll talk about that in more detail later. We have some corridor projects that have been funded previously. They've been extensive public engagement for the local stakeholders and for the community as we've moved forward. Some of that work has already been done and is ready for design and construction money. And then other mobility needs, that's kind of a catch-all for the other things we need to deal with as a community. As you just heard from terry, great presentation on the I-35 program. The Travis county portion of that is 2 billion to 2.3 billion. Again, that's in that [6:01:29 PM] 4.5 billion. We would expect the state to fund a majority of that, but we may need to be a partner as we move forward, so that's listed in our universe of needs. These are the corridor projects I mentioned earlier. We funded the previous bond programs. They identified over 120 million of short, medium-term needs, and $700 million of long-term needs. So those corridors, north Lamar, burnet, Riverside drive, airport boulevard, 969, those have had some public involvement for, again, the stakeholders along the corridors. And so that -- through that stakeholder process have developed a vision for what that corridor could be. And these were the funds that would be identified to accomplish those visions. We've done some preliminary engineering reports. And we would like to do more on future corridor development. You all, as you've come into office, you've identified needs in your district, lanes, the mills, palmer lane, route 360. These are some of the corridors that as we move forward, we would like to continue to investigate, as we have previous corridors, to find out what the vision would be and what those projects could be as we move forward. The corridor project process -- the way that we have looked at that is, we have looked at safety enhancements, improving intersection mobility enhancements, included in complete streets, sidewalk, bicycle lanes, how the signals would work better, street scape improvements, we look at all of that. As we move into corridors, we also need to look at the other infrastructure. Are there water upgrades that need to be addressed, are there storm water upgrades that need to be addressed, how would txdot -- would we coordinate with txdot projects, capital metro make sure that they have access to those corridors. We look alstakeholders' input to see what the communities want [6:03:31 PM] that corridor to be as we move forward. The other mobility needs, again, it's kind of a catch-all. We had over a billion dollars in the next ten years. Local mobility. This is the local area traffic managements. Your neighborhoods have cut-through traffic, we try to mitigate that. I'm sure you're hearing from communities that want to continue to look at those issues. We have a backlog of neighborhoods that want us to look at that. That would be funding that we could continue to work through neighborhoods to put the right projects together that would work for their issues. The active mobility side, the bicycle, urban trails sidewalk network. You funded a lot of sidewalk projects in your quarter-cent. I'm sure you're seeing the need -- Howard Lazarus, access Austin, looking at $216 million of just local needs that were high priority. There's over a billion dollars of missing sidewalks. So that's an indication of the huge infrastructure needs we have in our community. Streets and bridges, 500 million. I would also mention that as we look forward for capacity, kind of, projects we have an aging infrastructure that we need to maintain. So, any program as we move forward will advocate only for -- not only for new projects and corridor visions, but we also have to maintain what we have in place. So it's important to remember that there's maintenance required, as well as vision kind of projects. So, again, the universe of needs. I'll say this again. We didn't include 360. We didn't include anything on mopac south. We didn't include some of the corridor works that you all would want to do in your neighborhood. So this number is not even close to what the region would see, or what you would see as the city of Austin or your neighborhoods. But this was just to indicate the kind of needs -- without looking very hard at what our community is faced with, with mobility challenges. I also wanted to mention on the corridor plans how those work, because many members of the community, I think, are [6:05:32 PM] misunderstanding when we do a corridor plan, they then think that we're ready to go construct that. They're very general in nature, visionary. We take that and put product development work in, do a preliminary phase, continue to work through the neighborhoods to get some of the design considerations addressed. After the design is complete, then the projects are closer to being shovel- ready. We don't have the corridor projects, they're not shovel-ready, even the funded ones, we're working through them. If you choose, for example, to fund more corridor work, there is a process to get to actual -- the time when we would be pouring concrete in the ground for the neighborhoods. So, I just wanted to give you a realistic timeframe on some of those phases. Some key considerations as we doesn't need to be said, but needs always outweigh the available funding. You have had to balance that since you've been on council. You hear every day about needs in our community. There are always more needs than funding. We have to balance the capital renewal, as I mentioned earlier, about the maintenance side, with the new capacity. As terry mentioned earlier, it's very important for partnerships. We've learned as a region that we don't do anything in silos, as we've done 20 years ago when we were building things in silos. We have to work through partnerships to build these programs. It's important, also, to remember that there's a capacity issue. Even if you gave us millions and millions of dollars, there's a capacity issue in how to get those done, again, through the design phrase, through the public involvement phase, through the contracting phase. So, it's important for us, as we have a continuous pipeline of projects so we can continue to produce that work in our community. We have approximately $60 million in transportation [6:07:32 PM] bond programs, and the budget that you all approved in fy 16. We continue to work through stakeholder processes with your help, in many cases, in your districts for all the phases of project delivery. So, now this is one of the things I think you were interested in really getting to today, and that's potential funding sources as we move forward. I've identified a quick analysis of a lot of needs. And there's many more out there. How would we approach that as a community to start thinking about taking some bites out of this apple? Typically, the funding sources we use for capital projects of this nature are debt-funded. There are voter-approved general obligation bonds. That's since 1998, we've had 1.5 billion dollars' worth of that approved by voters. There's council approved certificate of obligations, or cos that are not voter-approved that you all can issue for projects you don't feel need that voter confirmation. Obviously, there's grants we look at through campo and the federal government and through state opportunities. We continue to look for that to partner with our regional entities, as well as we've done partnerships with all the counties that surround the city as well, that we participate with. When we see a project within our community that's actually in the county, counties have stepped forward and helped us to fund those projects. We want to work on developer providing infrastructure. The growth pace for growth, we're trying to work for transportation impact fee study to identify a predictable way that developers can identify what impacts they will have on the community and provide for that infrastructure. There are also other methods to fund that I didn't mention here, public improvement districts, tax increment financing, if you launch us on that program, we would look at that. The majority of funding generally comes from our debt sources. This is just to remind you about those different public [6:09:33 PM] improvement bonds. Those are the general obligation bonds that we go to the voters. The terms of those bonds, what they're typically used for, just want to give you that background as we move forward. These are just a history of the bond elections that we have had since 1998. Again, 81% has been expended, we have funds left we're continuing to work through. The majority of the remaining funds are committed in the 2012 bond projects that are underway. I wanted to switch gears and talk about how, if you all choose us to launch, how we will go through a typical bond development process. There's really three phases, typically. We'll talk about some changes in that if you want us to vary from that path. Phase one is initiation. Phase two is really the program development on what kind of program that you would like to take to the voters, and phase three would be setting the election and the process that goes through that. I'll go through that in detail, detail -- each one. Phase one, the needs assessment we've given you is preliminary and rough F. If you all want us to launch, we would launch into a needs assessment. We would anticipate that based on the results you had in your quarter-cent process that you would want us to engage with you and your communities to develop that needs assessment. That would take some time. If you wanted to go out to your community and develop the entire needs universe of needs, as we move forward. We would then do bond capacity. Some of these are not -- they're done in a parallel path, so it's not one after the other, but we would do bond capacity projections and tax rate scenarios for you all to evaluate what you think we would move forward with as a community on affordability concept. We would then develop a project selection criteria that you all would vet and approve, because if we come back with $6 billion worth of needs, and you tell us we have X to spend, how would you do any prioritization? We would like your input, from [6:11:34 PM] you in your neighborhoods on what you think the prioritization, selection criteria would be. And that's what we would use to move forward. Typically, the council then creates a citizen advisory group to help do some of the heavy lifting in that prioritization in the public input phase. Again, that's something that we've typically done in these bond programs. And you've also set aboutives and goals of the election, and some guiding principles. That helps us, again, come back to you with a package that when we come back, you don't say, that's not anywhere close to what we thought. We need that advice up front on how to do that. Phase two, program development, again, if you instill a citizen advisory group, that's when the heavy lifting is done, when they engage the public. There are many public meetings on that. And we can give you -- answer questions on that if you want the history of how that has occurred, the last few bond programs. And we would bring back first the citizen advisory committee would recommend a program to you of projects, and the manager would finalize the recommendation and bring it back to you for consideration. After that, we start setting the election, the council would adopt the ordinance that sets the bond election. We would bear all the educational materials in. And then as you are well aware, the public education process starts. We are -- we can only educate. The staff can't advocate one way or the other for a bond program, but you do know that there's entities that launch both for and against bond programs. And we always want to allow them time to do that, so the community is well-versed when they hit the ballot box. The timeframes for those typical paths, again, as we've seen in the past, for this typical process, is four to five months for phase one, anywhere from eight to nine months for phase two. That's, again, a robust public engagement process with an advisory committee. [6:13:35 PM] And then three to four months, including the education process after you call the election. So the typical path could be anywhere from 15 to 18 months. Now, we have heard -- as I'm sure you have heard -- is some pressure to move forward quickly. And so we have developed some different alternatives from what we typically do for your consideration as you want to -- if you want to move forward on a different alternative. An accelerated path, we could cut almost half a year off of that to 10 to 12 months. We would shorten the assessment to two to three months. The public engagement, five to six months, still including the advisory committee, only three months for the phase three, where we would educate the public and you all would set the election. Again, we've heard that if you want to go to a November election, this path would not work, either. So we looked at something even even -- more aggressive. If you want to go to a November of 2016 election, we think at that point, we almost would not be able to look at universe of needs. It would take us so long to go to the community and ask for input for a November '16 election. We can ask for input for a future election past that. We would basically have to use identified needs that we've already developed with previous public input processes, and then prioritize the projects based on that. That would only take a couple months. You probably wouldn't be able to use a citizen advisory group and do that heavy lifting and public engagement through that process. You might have to use the plans planing commissions, the bond oversight commission. We would work through them, and come back with a prioritized need using that citizen group input for council to consider. Then phase three would still be three months, and that, again, includes the public education process. The longer you can give the [6:15:36 PM] community to be informed about this program, we think that's the best process. So that would get you to June, July, August timeframe so that would be very aggressive. But if you really would push for a November election, that's the -- one path that we could see to get there. So next steps, we really are -- we assume this is a beginning of the discussion and not the end of the discussion. But we obviously wanted to tee this up based on things that we've heard, and then react to your direction going forward. >> Kitchen: Thank you. That was an excellent presentation. Very helpful information. I'm going to pass out -- just for discussion purposes, not for any action today -- and it's just a straw man for discussion purposes. I'll pass that out both ways. And this would be -- you know, after some discussion, it would be an item that we could bring at our February 11th to act on to provide direction to our staff. Again, this is for discussion purposes. And so this is designed to follow the expedited process that Mr. Goode just provided to us, which would involve -- and, again, let me just back up. What we're talking about here is the potential for a public conversation and input process to discuss potential transportation projects, as we've been talking about, and funding options. And so, the public conversation process for an expedited approach like this would involve planning commission, utc. We do have an existing bond oversight commission. Other groups like the public safety commission, the pedestrian and bicycle advisory committee, and there may be other committees, as well as working with us in our districts, and with the conversation core. And, again, so that would involve using March, April, may, [6:17:38 PM] June -- into June as a public conversation process. And then working with the staff to bring information back to us in June -- hopefully in June. As soon as it was available, to make some decisions about whether we even want to talk about a bond in November. Now, I wanted to emphasize potential transportation projects and funding options, because a bond, as you mentioned earlier, is not our only funding option. And bonding does have a lot of implications. With regard to our taxes. And so that's certainly something we would want to understand before we made any decisions. But going down this road would provide us an opportunity to have these discussions over the next few months, and not make any decisions at this point in time other than to start a process. So, I'll stop right there. And, again, this is not for action, this is just for consideration and for discussion purposes today. So does anybody have any questions, anything they want to say about this? Okay. >> Zimmerman: Thank you, chair kitchen. I want to back up to the 2010 mobility bond. And I think part of our problem and frustration as a city is the use of terms. So this -- I was deeply involved in this, and I worked against the bond. I wish I could put up the glossy overhead that came from the city of Austin, but it says mobility bond -- roadway projects, Tran sit projects, bicycle projects, pedestrian projects. And so the people are confused. What are we paying for? Are we paying to widen roads, or are we paying for urban trails, bicycle and pedestrian projects? As it turned out, people were shocked when I had to explain to [6:19:38 PM] them that the number 1 most expensive project of the so-called members of the mobility bond was theconcrete sidewalk out here on the lake. So part of our problem with our public conversation is we put a mobility bond -- the proponents put out, vote for the bond, they showed cars in traffic. The people think, oh, yeah, that's a big problem. Traffic's a big problem. Let's vote for the bond. And the biggest spending project was a concrete sidewalk in the lake. And to me, that's our biggest problem to overcome as a new city council, is to try to present more honest choices to our voters, because if we had broken it out and said, would you like to pay $15 million for a sidewalk in the lake, the vote would probably be, no. But we don't do that. We bundle stuff together so we never get a clear chance to vote as a community on which direction we want to go. So that's kind of my high-level, general comment about what's got to change in the way we present these elections. >> Kitchen: Okay. Councilmember Gallo. >> Gallo: Thank you. This is really helpful and very organized. I've got a question, trying to, kind of, wrap my brain around this whole conversation. So if we are talking about the aggressive seven to eight- month path, and I -- go back and I look at the slides that are on page 6 and 7, so it's slide 11, 12, 13, and 14, it sounds like that we are locking at projects that have already been identified with public input. So are those referenced in those particular slides, or are we talking about something else? I'm just trying to connect the two. >> That would be one of the paths we could take, is to take the corridor studies that have already been vetted through the public process. There have been a lot of stakeholder involvement in those corridors. So I'm not -- at this point, we haven't developed it. But we would have to use [6:21:42 PM] projects -- I guess here's the point. It would be really difficult for us to go out to every neighborhood and ask what the universe of needs would be, which we think we should do, but would be very challenging to do that in just a short period of time. >> Kitchen: I understand that. But I'm trying to relate just what you said to the slides that are the corridor improvement slides. >> And I guess the answer is, we have not developed any suggested program. But that would be one alternative we could look at is just using corridor studies that have already been done and fund those $120 million, some portion of those funds. That could be a path. >> Gallo: It is listed on the slide that has the six corridor improvements. Now, what about the next slide that shows -- >> We could fund some of those corridor studies, as well. You could fund implementation of corridor studies that are already completed. You could fund new corridor studies -- remember, the continual cycle of programs. If you want to set up for the next funding cycle, perhaps there's some future corridors we should study in this bond program. We should always be looking one step ahead. So you could fund the corridor studies that have been completed. You could fund new corridor studies. >> Gallo: The new corridor studies would have not had the public input. >> They would not have had public input. >> Gallo: Going back to the ones that have had the public input, does that include both of those two slides, the six corridors plus the ones that are proposed, preliminary engineering? >> No, many of those projects have not. They're just starting the process at this point. And many of those have not gone -- see, the six corridors that were mentioned before have gone in a bond program. That's been part of the public education process. These are identified corridors that we're working on now but we haven't had a lot of public input on many of them. >> Gallo: Okay. I'm looking at a lot of this, and there's not an abundance of east-west connections. Is there a reason for that? I look at the six corridor [6:23:43 PM] improvements that are underway and I'm just not seeing much in the way of our east-west. We're sitting right here on --Cesar Chavez that is going to have something drastically done. >> That's something we should look at in the future. >> Gallo: There's not anything under consideration at this point as far as east-west? >> I'll ask rob to comment on that. >> Kitchen: Just to clarify, I should've clarified this before. And you may know this already. But, for the public, the projects that have been laid out today are just for example purposes. They are not the proposed package. We asked -- the staff is asking for our direction about whether to even start a conversation before they go through the effort of developing a package. So I know you understand that, councilmember Gallo, but I want to make sure that the public understands that, that the list of projects that are in this handout are just to give us some examples. So, go ahead. >> So, Robert spillar, director of transportation. Just a quick answer to your question, were there not any east-west corridors, no, there really weren't any evaluated. Please understand that the corridor program grew out of a desire by neighborhoods to address the heaviest streets. And the first tranche, if you will, were mostly north-south. That said, I just remembered that we do have airport and mlk, which provide a more east-west directional movement. >> Gallo: Okay. Thank you. >> Kitchen: Okay. Councilmember pool? >> Pool: Thank you. If we are looking at accelerating a bond with the seven to eight-month process, do [6:25:43 PM] we have a list of strategically identified projects that are shovel-ready that would be useful to move forward with? Or is it -- this really an action where this body and the community needs to take the time it needs to make sure we are strategic in how we choose the projects? >> Yes and no. >> Pool: Okay. >> We haven't done, again, a lot of work in piggybacking on what councilmember kitchen said, to develop what we would recommend to you on a program. This, again, kind of the start of the conversation. If you want us to do that, we'll be glad to launch that. In a perfect world -- which we never are in, because we have so many needs -- we're launching a strategic mobility plan that will identify transportation. But it's a year, year and a half, two years from completion. So if we wait for that, our problems continue to get worse. And we know -- we can identify -- you all can identify some problems that we should work on. So perfect world, strategic mobility plan, you get that done, the vision's there, now go do some work. But I'm not sure we can wait for that. The typical -- the scheduled bond program was 2018. This discussion is really are we waiting until then, or should we launch something before that. >> Pool: And either way, if we do 2018, we would still need to get under way with -- >> Could be. >> Pool: Finding the projects. >> As we mentioned earlier, there's such a phased approach to projects, it could be that we could do some corridor work in preparation for that next program, where you would then do some implementation work. >> Pool: And some of those projects could be done within the budget that we have currently. Would those projects -- would they need additional funding? >> Yes. Many of the project -- the corridor studies that are done, that work is done. But we could do some design work. The visionary work is done. We could do some more design [6:27:46 PM] work and prep to get shovel-ready for the next program, yes. >> Pool: And I think that point is key, that the projects are shovel-ready so that when we go to the effort of putting a bond community together and working on which items they want, it helps facilitate that whole process when we can present them with projects that are close to ready to go. And then the community can see a quicker return after having made that vote, hoping it's successful and they can actually see some change happening. >> I think that was some of the intent, with the previous bond program, when these corridor studies were launched. They knew we didn't have construction funds, but they would have visions in place ready for the next funding opportunity. >> Pool: So tee them up. >> Yes. >> Pool: Thanks. >> Kitchen: Okay. Councilmember Garza. >> Garza: I guess just for the sake of discussion, since so many of us are here right now, a concern of mine would be when we're saying it's an accelerated process. And the inability to have those more grassroots, more neighborhood meetings, because I would say the purpose of those -- that kind of input is not only to get input, it's also to get buy-in and to get support. >> Certainly. >> Garza: And so while I absolutely understand these projects have been vetted, they're ready to go, they've been studied, the circle of people who know that part of it is small. And we need support and votes to pass a bond election. So I guess I'm concerned about the ability -- especially when we're saying it's accelerated. And a lot of the concern against prop 1 that just recently failed was that many people felt like there was a process, but they [6:29:47 PM] weren't heard. And so I think that's a thing we need to really consider if we're thinking of an accelerated process. >> Kitchen: Other questions or comments? No? Okay. All right. Well, thank you very much. I will just say that this has been very, very helpful. This briefing from all of you has been very, very helpful. We obviously have a lot more to think about and discuss. I am going to bring forward an item for discussion purposes on February 11th that would be direction to staff to move forward with the process. So we can talk about it again at our work session next week, and get a sense for whether the council wants to give direction to our staff to move forward with some type of process or no not. And, again, at this point in time, we could be talking about potential for a bond in 2016. We could be talking about just beginning the process for bond in 2018. Or we could simply be talking about beginning the process for identifying other funding options and other major transportation projects. So, with that said -- >> Casar: Councilmember kitchen, sorry, I had to run out and take a quick phone call. I didn't get to put in I'll be meeting with staff and talking to folks in the community, too. A lot of times the corridor studies just mean roads, folks think it's only for roads. But I'm interested in supporting transit. I know that's listed in the resolution. In particular, opportunities for dedicated bus lane transit that could evolve into rail or start out as rail transit, because obviously, councilmember Zimmerman and I are never surprised when we disagree. I grew up in Houston. I think the example of what we've seen with the freeway and [6:31:48 PM] the investment there is disastrous, and I want to think of ways that we don't induce sprawl, but instead, think of efficient and effective public transportation and getting folks close in to the places where they want to go. So, as we talk through this, I want to keep -- understand that, of course, there's a lot of conversation about 35, a lot of conversation about our roads. But -- our corridors are more than about single-occupancy transportation. I'll be thinking about that, talking to staff, the council, and the community about those parts. >> Kitchen: I'm also looking forward to hearing from the public what they would like us to do, whether they'd like to start a community conversation at this point in time. So we'll have the opportunity to hear from the public at our February 11th meeting, also. So, let's see. I know we're running late, but, councilmember Zimmerman, go ahead. >> Zimmerman: Just one quick thing about the kb freeway for those who aren't familiar with Houston and don't want to be, that's interstate ten. I was there when they started the major construction project. But, I would say the interstate ten freeway expansion resembles a freeway, where I-35 resembles a disaster. So. >> Kitchen: Okay. Any other comments or anything? All right. Thank you very much. Now -- and thank you to all my fellow councilmembers for coming today. I think this will help our conversation. And for the kids. I'll be talking to them afterwards. [ Laughing ] Yeah. >> Zimmerman: Just quickly, future agenda item. >> Kitchen: Go ahead. >> Zimmerman: We need to bring back the update on the taxi cooperative. Can we make a commitment that we'll bring back the taxi cooperative for the next meeting? >> Kitchen: Yes. Anything else? All right. We are now adjourned.