Mobility Committee Meeting Transcript – 12/7/2016 Title: ATXN 24/7 Recording Channel: 6 - ATXN Recorded On: 12/7/2016 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 12/7/2016 Transcript Generated by SnapStream ================================== [3:08:27 PM] >> Kitchen: Good afternoon, everyone. We're going to convene the mobility committee meeting. I want to also recognize councilmember Leslie pool who is joining us today. Thank you. >> Pool: You bet. >> Kitchen: First item of business is approval of the minutes. Do I have a motion? Motion by councilmember Garza, second by councilmember Zimmerman. All in favor? The minutes are approved. We'll now go to citizens communication. We have one person wishing to speak on citizens communication and that's Nathan. And Nathan -- is Nathan here? Okay. Nathan, I apologize, I'm not sure how to pronounce your last name. If you will tell us your first and last name and you have three minutes. >> Am I on? My last name is zelias, mother, a mouthful. I came up here to talk about a subject that's been pretty close to my heart for quite awhile ever since January actually. A friend of mine called van ended up tripping on one of the sidewalks right around where we live, which are in pretty bad state, and ended up breaking his knee. And he ended up getting a wheelchair and he's gotten better since then, but it was very difficult for him to be able to navigate our streets and sidewalks especially ever since then. And he said he's kind of glad it happened actually because it got him in contact with a lot of other people with physical disabilities who had a hard time navigate our sidewalks. And he realize that ever since Austin has been created we've had a lot of [3:10:28 PM] expansion, ever since then, but I think that now as the expansion is slowing down and we're starting to work more on infrastructure, one of the most important things to focus on would be sidewalks because a lot of people may not realize it, people with physical disabilities have a seriously difficult time navigating our sidewalks and the city in general. And I would -- it's a short message, but I would basically just say that as we work on slowly but surely working up our infrastructure, our main focus should be on -- least one of our main focuses should be on improving the condition of sidewalks so that people with disabilities can have an easier time getting around. That's all. Thank you. >> Kitchen: Thank you. Can you tell us where this sidewalk was? >> Oh. It was in front of where I live -- >> Kitchen: What street is that? >> Well, I live on soco and Lightsey. It was right around there. >> Kitchen: Okay. So on Lightsey and -- >> Yeah, soco. >> Kitchen: Thank you. Have you -- can someone from our staff talk with him and we're going to follow up and make sure we can do something to repair that sidewalk. Thank you for coming and talking with us today. >> Zimmerman: We have one more speaker signed up. >> Thank you, chair, I just signed up at the last second. Thank you for letting me speak. I'll be very brief. You know, now that we have the transportation bond passed and the city is moving with all due haste in trying to get some improvements based on that, which I really appreciate, I know the council also wanted to make sure that there was a good public engagement part of that process so that they could be involved throughout that process, [3:12:29 PM] design decisions, which specific projects are going to, you know, be done on our corridors, our sidewalks and trails and bicycle lanes. So I just would suggest that maybe at one of your future meetings you could ask the staff to come back and give you an update on what that plan looks like, how citizens can be engaged, residents can be engaged in that process. And I've already talked to director spillar and I know they're getting started with that process too. This is moving fast and I'm glad it is, but I think that public engagement part and how it will will be very important and it will help educate us on how to get involved and when we can start getting involved wildfire that process. I think maybe in a future agenda item where we can discuss that in a little more detail would be very helpful. >> Kitchen: Yes. That's a good suggestion. I think we've got it on one of our planned agendas coming up. We're timing that with what works for the staff in terms of bringing their plans together. >> Thank you very much. >> Kitchen: Thank you. Okay. We're going to begin a little bit out of order and begin with the capital improvement plan process, which is item number 5. So we'll start with the staff -- the staff briefing on the capital improvement program process for, including criteria for developing the proposed project list. So my colleagues, I think we have this presentation sort of in two ports. The first part being sort of an overview of the process itself and the second part an example of one of the project areas -- not project areas, but one of the transportation category areas that we use this kind of funding for. So I would say that we will ask questions as we go along. I'll keep an eye on the time and if we need to speed up, we will. But we'll just ask questions as we go along. Okay, go ahead. >> Good morning, [3:14:30 PM] councilmembers, my name is Ed van eenoo, chief financial officer for the city. I just have a few slides to show you the overview of the city's cip budget and the timelines and process. And Robert Hinojosa is going to come up and get in a lot more details about some of the methods that public works uses to prioritize their capital projects. The first thing -- I don't think we have the right presentation up. >> Oh, so you're starting early, Robert Goode, assistant city manager. We knew you had a request to hear some criteria and how we prioritize mobility projects in the cip. So we put together for one the list of -- where we going? The list of these are the type of mobility projects that run through the capital improvement program. And we thought that at some point you would want to dive deep on all of these and so we're going to pick one out today in the street reconstruction side and go into greater detail. That's one of the ones in public works' sport folio. So we're going to dive deeper and public works staffed will run you through that. Ed will run you through a high level here is how the cip process works so you can kind of understand that as well as we'll dive deeper on one of the programs. And then today at some point as a committee if you want us to start coming back on all those [3:16:31 PM] programs, tell us which ones you want to do, and then we can start scheduling future committee meetings to give you the detail, it's pretty detailed on the street side, but we thought it's important for you to see what staff goes through to prioritize projects across the city. So I hope you're very interested and hope this educates you on how the prioritization side, so I hope you will see that and we'll take your feedback on which other programs you would like that level of detail on. So at this point I'll ask Ed to come up and he will run you through how the cip process in general kind of works. >> Kitchen: Let's back up for just a second. In terms of these other -- this is the list of programs within transportation and public works, right? >> Right. >> Kitchen: It may be that -- we'll see we would like to do, but it may be that we'll drill one on one or two of them in the future, but it may be there there's a way to provide us with a list of criteria for each one and we'll see what people are interested in. I know from my perspective I would like to see a program for each of the program area, criteria meaning what -- I know it's complex, but meaning what are the key things that you look at that help you prioritize. >> And that's why I think today you will see an example of that as one of the programs in the street reconstruction side and that we can either come back with a briefing or just a report on just like we do in the street reconstruction, here are the things that each department looks at for traffic signals, what we look at to determine -- where to prioritize those projects. So we thought this would be a benchmark test case and we give you feedback on what works best for you. >> That's good. Okay. >> Now you're on. >> All right. I'm back, Ed van eenoo, deputy cfo for the city. This is very basic, but I think it provides some important context for [3:18:31 PM] our capital budget. Some of it is understanding the terminology that we use when talking about our operating budget. First is the capital budget. Over on the blue side the operating budget side we use that to fund our day-to-day operations that. Largely staff expenses, salaries, utility costs, et cetera. When you look at capital expenditures that's the budget we use for capital assets, buildings such as rec centers, fire stations, community centers. Also our horizontal infrastructure, streets, pipelines, sewer pipelines and power lines, all that horizontal infrastructure is funded out of the capital budget. We also fund vehicles. These are some of the major categories of items that we pay for out of our capital budget. Something not on this land would also be land acquisitions and sometimes major projects, things like codenext, things that are going to last for multiple years we'll fund out of the capital budget so we can account for all the expenditures that happen over time on a major project like codenext or body cameras or digital video. The other thing is the appropriations. For all the money that is spent in that fiscal year or it reverts back to ending balance. On the capital side of things it doesn't work that way. Many of these projects, if not all of these capital projects, are multi-year in nature. So when council appropriates the fund, those appropriations stay in effect until the project is completed. That leads to the difference between appropriations and spending plan. There's really not a difference on the operating budget, so for example, a department with 100-million-dollar operating budget, that is their spending plan. They're planning on spending $100 million next year and council approves that appropriation for that department so there's a great alignment between the appropriations council approves for the operating budget and the spending plan for that year. That does not exist at all on the capital [3:20:33 PM] budget where council might appropriate money in one year and that appropriation won't get spent for two or three or four years depending upon the project. So you will see on the next slide there's another going to be a good alignment between the appropriations that you approve and the spending. So it's important to understand the appropriations or the spending authority that council is authorizing and it's what you approve ultimately when you're approving the budget you're approving appropriations. First is the spending plan, which is really where the action is on the cip, how much money are we planning on spending next year. In regards to funding sources, operating budget is taxes, fees for services, grants. On the capital side we have debt is a major source of funding for our capital program. Transfers from our operating budget, kind of cash funding of capital projects. Departments transfer money to fund capital projects and then grants is also a source of funding on the capital side of thing. And then just insurance of magnitude. Our operating budget is about $3.7 billion. That includes the debt service for debt that's been issued for capital projects in previous years. It also includes the transfers to capital that I mentioned and then the capital budget itself self is $863 million for fiscal year 17. And again, that was the spending plan. The difference between spending plan and appropriations. Just a little bit more on that topic because I think it's important. You can see over time as I was saying the appropriations in any one year might be more than, they might be less than, but the spending is actually planned in that given year. Typically our spending has been 700, $750 million, but in next fiscal year we're projecting $815 million. >> Kitchen: When we [3:22:33 PM] vote to appropriate is there a limit to how much out it has to be spent? Obviously it doesn't have to be spent in the same year. Does it have to be spent within a certain number of years? >> There's not a limit to it, no. I wanted to -- >> Kitchen: We have another question. >> >> Garza: The transfers from operating is that something directed by council or -- you gave the codenext example. So was that in somebody's operating budget and they said, do you know what, since this is going take a couple of years to do this, is it a unilateral department decision to transfer? >> It would always be like a departmental or staff recommendation, then council would approve it through the budget process. The departments, the three departments that do the largest transfers from their operating budget to their capital budget would be Austin energy and Austin energy, both which have financial patrols where they say they're going -- they want to fund a certain percentage of their capital program on a cash basis or an annual operating transfer basis as opposed to issuing debt. So they just want to be careful and not overleveraging their source of debt. And water department has been trying for years to get to $30 million a year of a transfer from their operating budget to their capital budget to fund watershed projects. And that has been a conversation that staff has had with council over the years, this idea about moving away from using public improvement bonds, bond programs to fund watershed projects and moving towards an annual cash funding of those projects. Codenext is a general fund department so that funding came from the general fund, a transfer from the general fund, to our capital budget to fund codenext. >> Garza: You said that came from -- so staff recommended that and it was approved through the budget? >> In that particular case we wouldn't be able to fund something like a planning document using [3:24:34 PM] debt. If we're doing codenext it needed to be cash funded. We chose to set it up as a capital budget because we knew it would be a multi-year budget so we were seeking council's approval. That wasn't an option on that and there's a number of things where debt wouldn't be appropriate. Okay. Just real quick in terms of the types of debt you will see us in funding the capital budget. Public improvement bonds, those are bonds we do with public approval. They are issued on a 20 year term. Certificates of obligation are also general obligation debt. They fund real property. We've used a lot of certificates of obligation for floodplain buyouts and things of that nature. They do not require voting approval. A term is usually 10 to 20 years. That's where we're issuing our certificates of obligation for. Contractual obligations is what we use to fund a lot of our mobile assets, vehicles, fire trucks, things of that nature. It's shorter term and it we also have lower rates on contractual obligations. We have a commercial paper program that we use in Austin energy and Austin water, which gives them the ability to get quick access to funding they need for their operations at very low interest rates. And then those commercial paper they get rolled into revenue bonds at some future date. Commercial paper is very, very short-term. It's also very, very low cost and then we convert those into revenue bonds and the revenue bonds are utilized binary and Austin water, also aviation and the convention center. These are non-general obligation debt sources that are backed and secured by those enterprise operation's ability to generate revenues. As opposed to the tax supported debt that we might issue. So in regards to our cip [3:26:34 PM] cycle, we kind of just do this little bubble chart to show the way the process works. We have this ongoing process. Our departments have an ongoing process of looking at capital needs throughout the city. Those may be needs that are identified through a master planning process, through policy discussions with the city council, but there's this ongoing process of departments looking at what their capital needs might be. That then flows into our long range cip strategic plan, which gets updated annually and it looks at our capital needs along four categories, one being a planning and policy priorities that may come from the city council, from master planning documents, it also looks at things in regards to capital renewal service demands and urgent needs. Those are the four categories they're looking at in terms of trying to address your multitude of capital needs they're looking at it around those four categories. In terms of identifying funding, of course bond programs are one of the high profile ways that we generate funds to support our capital program. I've talked about cash funding through annual operating budget transfers. Grants is another way that we support our capital program. So you're going from needs, which is a huge universe, down to looking at things from a more strategic standpoint, that kind of narrows the equation. And then the rubber really hits the road with funding. We don't have nearly enough funding to address all the capital needs in the city so we start matching up available funding to those needs. That all comes together in our five-year cip plan, which is where you start really seeing based upon the needs that are out there, the funding that is available that's been approved by voters or that's coming through some cash funding mechanism. That's where we start seeing projects and subprojects. You start seeing those spending plans, how much money are we planning on spending over the next five years. And the appropriations [3:28:35 PM] that would be needed to support that spending plan. We do produce a document on an annual basis, but it's really a snapshot in time. That whole equation of the five-year spending plan, it really continually evolves as projects develop over time and new information comes together. We are continually updating our five-year plan, but then on an annual basis we do publish document, we put it out on the internet for folks to look at. But that document thin informs our annual budget so in that document where we're identifying, okay, for the central library for the next five years this is how much money we're planning on spending on the central library. From that we can determine based on that spending plan we know when the appropriations need to come in order to support the contracts that will create the project and that's where we'll come to council and say okay N the budget in order to support our capital program as articulated in the five-year plan we need additional appropriations. And that's where we come to council seeking that spending authority. And then of course implementing and monitoring the program, you will hear a lot about how we go about doing that I think from Robert. And then we just start over again in the next year with that identifying our needs cycle. >> Kitchen: Okay. Let me ask a question then. So we're voting obviously on the annual budget, right? And so what we're voting on then are appropriations that relate back to the five-year plan. Is that the right way to think about it? >> That's absolutely the right way. >> Kitchen: What we're roting on may be spent in the first year, second year, third year, whatever, but it's for projects listed in the five-year plan. >> That's right. >> Kitchen: And then the five-year plan is updated annually, I guess. Not annually, but continuously. >> We're Tinsley updating that -- continuously operating that plan, yes. >> Kitchen: So if a [3:30:36 PM] councilmember, for example, is hearing from a constituent and has a project in mind, or is concerned and has a question about a potential for a project, does it go through this whole process? And I guess it goes through this process maybe just in the fact of the way it's discussed. In other words, it's bounced off the long range strategic plan, which is a way to think about all of our needs and how we prioritize them? Is that the way to think about that? It's more at a strategic level? >> It is. >> Kitchen: 10 we talk in terms of funding and it may or may not end up in the five-year cip. >> The only things that show up in the five-year cip are things we have funding for. So there may be things that we would like to do, need to do, but if there's not funding for it, we don't put it in the plan because the cip says this is what we're planning to spend over the next five years. So obviously we can only spend money that we have access to. >> Kitchen: Okay. But if it's sort of a wish list, so to speak, is there another list of all of those? Is that the lrcsp or is it kept by department? >> I think it's kept by department. As part of the identifying needs, they call it a rolling needs assessment. So there is a list out there of what the departments feel their needs on, but that level of granularity is not the purpose of the cip plan -- it's not the purpose of the long range plan and also not the purpose of the cip plan. The five-year plan is really to say where the rubber hits the road, this is the money we have, these are the projects that have been approved either through bond programs or through council initiatives and this is how we're planning on implementing it over the next five years. >> Okay. Thank you. >> This is my last slide just in terms of timelines, January through April. This is a timeline of how do we get to that September budget adoption. I think you're very familiar with the timeline and the cycle we go through that's really more focused on the operating budget, [3:32:37 PM] but we also have a similar process that happens on the cip side where January through April we have our departments are working to develop their five-year or perhaps a better word is to update their five- year cip spending plan. Again as kind of this ongoing process of looking at their projects and their funding and depending upon how the project is going, that spending plan may get moved up, it may get slid back depending on what's happening as the project is getting implemented. We do publish that snapshot in June of our five-year plan. It's kind of ever evolving, but once a year we want to get out there with a snapshot in time. So by the time you get to June to September you may see a disconnect between the five-year plan and the budget as the budget document and what we actually recommend in budget document may start to move away from the five-year plan a little bit. Generally not a lot. I'm going to skip over the blue ones for now. In early August we submit our proposed budget to council, including our capital program appropriations. So the cip, the five-year plan, is a pretty thick document that lays out project by project what our spending plan is. By the time it hits to the budget, we're really just focusing the budget presentation on these are the additional appropriations that we need department by department to support the spending that's been outlined in the five-year plan. And then budget adoption of course happens in September. Those things that I highlighted in blue are kind of the debt issuance process that overlays this kip cip process. So in terms of how we go about issuing debt, we do one bond sale per year in August. That's where we're issuing our co's and KO's. And our revenue bonds. And then leading up to that in June is when we'll go before the bond oversight committee with our general obligation debt schedule. That's one of the things that the bond oversight committee likes to see is for our general obligation debt, for [3:34:37 PM] those voter-approved bond programs, what is our schedule for when we're planning on implementing those projects and issuing the debt? So we'll take the 720-million-dollar mobility plan, we will take that before the bond oversight committee in June and lay that out for them. And then we do a -- for our certificates of obligation we're required to do a notice of intent, and that hits council in June. So the blue areas are kind of where you start to see the debt side of the capital budget coming to council for approval. And that's all I have on the process. >> Kitchen: Any questions on the process before we move on to the example? Okay. Thank you very much. >> Good afternoon, chair, committee members, councilmembers. I'm here to talk about a very exciting topic for me and what we do. Prioritization of streets renewal projects, that's an issue that you had brought up during the budget presentations and you were interested. But before we get to that and how we select the projects, we need to show you what we do with our actual assets so it gets to the point where we have to reconstruct it and then we get to the prioritization of it. I don't want to get too technical on it. I know you were a little concerned with that, so we left a lot of the technical part out of it. >> Kitchen: Yeah. I think this is great detail. I looked at the backup. It's really very, very useful and helpful. I'm thinking that the more technical slides you can probably go through quickly and then as people have questions in those slides, the 43 through 48 where you really get down in talking about how you prioritize in your criterias is the focus. >> We left the technical slide in there just to show you there is a technical aspect to it. I wasn't going to go too much into it. As you do see, we have a lot of pictures just so you all can relate. I want to start off with some of the basic definitions that we use because a lot of people are confused as what we use to measure. [3:36:39 PM] Typically, and this outlines what I want to talk about, the definition of lane mile, data collection, the street grades, street inventory, benchmarking, pavement maintenance, pavement life cycle, pavement management, prioritization and coordination. You gave me a few minutes and I want to get through some of these pretty quick. So a lane mile is really 10-foot by 5,280 feet, which is a mile. All our streets have different widths so we had to come up with a way to actual standardize it and this is the method. The example we came up with, everybody knows where speedway is. In this case a lane mile is three blocks. We used that and converted it had into lane miles. Three blocks is actually one lane mile in this particular street. So some of the -- we do pavement data collection every -- we inventory half of the streets every year because our streets are constantly changing because of the weather, because of the traffic. So in order to keep up with the condition of the streets -- these are the standards that we use and we won't get too much into that. This is equipment that we use, something that we contract out. We don't have the ability to do this internally. It's very expensive equipment. So the basic conditions, gradings for our streets are this and they're very simplified. A is excellent, B is good, C is fair, D is poor and of course F is failing. >> Kitchen: Let's go back to that for just a minute. On these street grades, this is grading for purposes of the condition of the street? >> Correct. >> Kitchen: Because we hear about, you know, roads being an F or whatever, but there's also a different grading system for like traffic flow and things like that. >> Right. This is strictly for the asset itself and the way we maintain it. And I'll talk a little bit about that because it's all part of the big picture and why we get to the reconstruction part. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> I'll give you an idea of what an a street [3:38:40 PM] looks like. Generally speaking, this is near the mopac area, a smooth ride. Should need very little preventive maintenance. Typically if you build a street and you don't do any preventive maintenance on it it should last 20 years, roughly speaking. So the idea is to maintain it and prolong the life of that particular street and you will see that as we go forward. A B street is a good street. You will see some minor cracking, but that's part of our preventive maintenance program. A C and fair street is it getting there, but we still have the ability through maintenance to actually extend the life of the street. And where we start getting into the streets that really cause us concerns are the D and F streets, the poor condition streets. And there's a range in the D streets that we can actually take it out of the D street with some of our maintenance process that we use to put it back into the C. But a Normal life of a street is very definite. If we maintain it it may last 70 years and then it will just fall apart. And there's a lot of conditions to that and we'll cover some of that as well. >> Kitchen: We have a question. Go ahead. >> Sorry, trying to go fast. >> Pool: No, that's okay. A quick question for you. In those parts of town where txdot is is responsible for the maintenance, there's a lot of kind of substandard pavement. And I guess they would be either D or F, like for example, north Lamar in some sections. So do they also grade like we do and do you have any information on what kind of a paving schedule they might be on? >> Well, we work with them closely. I can't give you any very specific information. Their criteria may be a little different. Like every town or every city is going to be different. They have the same standards, but they move their criteria on what an a street, F street, D street is, the type of street it is, whether it's a highway, arterial, what it's used for. So we work with them and we actually maintain some of those streets. We have an agreement to do some of those streets, but certainly we don't want to take all of them up because it's a lot of funding. But I can follow up on [3:40:40 PM] that information to get you more specifics on that location. >> Pool: That would be helpful because that also feeds into the piece of the bonds that was if we were going to look at purchasing state-owned highways and what state of repair would those roads be in if we were to make that transfer. >> Right. And we have done an assessment to answer those questions, the turn-back streets, and came up with some numbers as to what it would take to maintain those on a regular basis if we did take them back. And it's going to be a pretty good hit. And we can talk to Robert Goode about providing you that information, but we did a full analysis of what it would cost to maintain those streets. >> Pool: Thank you. >> So the pavement condition, this is I think where the fun part is going to start because we'll have really cool graphs and it will start to give you an idea of what we do and why we do it. So this is our current condition that we have with our 7,663 lane miles of streets. As you can see, we're at about 78% of our street infrastructure or inventory is above a C, which we're slowly dipping and there's probably a lot of reasons for that. The street condition, this is going to depict the condition of the streets and we just wanted to give you a very general picture and it's going to be more apparent as we go through the slides that some of these red areas that are failed and poor streets are the older streets in the older parts of town that have a lot of traffic. This is the age of the street. We did an inventory of all the streets and their ages and we kind of categorized them. So there's been a question as to why do we spend a lot of money in the downtown area and this is probably the reason. We have the oldest streets in our city in these areas. >> Kitchen: Could you back up for just a second? The previous one. Actually, both of [3:42:40 PM] these -- let me just make a request, if possible. Both of these maps would be interesting to see on a district basis. >> Zimmerman: The numbers are there. >> Kitchen: Yeah, I guess we could blow them up. I was trying to see closer. [Laughter]. >> We can do that. Great. We can do that. We can provide that. We're going to put this on our sharepoint site and our web page as well. >> Kitchen: That's my real request is so I could see them. >> We attempted to do that, but it's too small. >> Kitchen: That's okay. >> So I think this is a real critical table that you may be interested. So I'll spend a little time here if you haven't looked at it. It gives you an idea of the condition of the streets and all of your districts. And again, I want to emphasize that the way we determine this is kind of very technical in nature and it is done. We have a full inventory every two years basically. We pay somebody to give us those indexes and then we put it into our information system to make that determination. And it becomes apparent when you start looking at the numbers and some of the districts that age is a factor in some of these streets. Yes, sir. >> Zimmerman: Before you go on, could you back up again to the map that had the numbers on it? Back up one more? There. So this is common sense, right, if you look at the suburbs, district 6, district 8, two and three, even one out here in some areas. The further you get out of the core, the city, these are more newly annexed areas. And when we did the cip study and saw the less than one percent of one of the cip budget expenditures was going to district 6, that was the answer. Well, those are newer streets. And so -- but see the people being annexed are like, well, this doesn't seem fair. We're paying the taxes into this. And our money that needs to go to our road maintenance is going downtown. So is there any way to break out of this? Because those streets in downtown Austin will [3:44:41 PM] always be the "Oldest" streets. >> That's a good question, but a very tough question. Either you bring them all back to good condition, which will be very expensive, or you try and spend money on maintaining them. We have been out to district 6, we do some of the maintenance -- as soon as you annex it, we go out there -- we annex it, we go out and do a condition assessment of those areas and then we put it into our prioritization for our maintenance program. But we have a process and it's an asset management process and we want direction from that, but that's typically the way we do it for those areas. >> Zimmerman: I've lived here 16 years and I've driven all over the city and just anecdotally when I look at this map, I don't -- I've driven around downtown a lot. I don't see the downtown streets in absolutely abysmal condition compared to the suburb where I live. I just don't see it. >> Kitchen: I have a similar question. I understand the priority is not just age. I mean, you're also looking at condition. And I know you're going to get to that more in terms of the priority. So it's not just age, but when you look at these condition grades on this map, when it says red failed, that goes back to the slide you showed us before, rye, in terms of what a road looks like? >> Right. >> Kitchen: So I have the same -- in some of these areas -- >> We're talking about the capital side which is street reconstruction, which is failed. Robert is going to get to the maintenance side which hits the newer streets. We try to keep those new for a longer period of time. New not meaning-- new means if we reconstruct a road downtown, it's brand new. It's not the age of when we annexed it, it's the [3:46:42 PM] age of that roadway. So your question is valid, but Robert today is talking about the capital side. That's the street reconstruction that we spend on failed streets. So your question is do you spend maintenance dollars on my district? The answer is yes. Maybe even more in your district to keep those good streets good for a longer period of time. And he will get to some of that. >> Zimmerman: One quick point because that's a great point you made there, but engineeringwise it's more expensive for me to reconstruct a street with higher traffic. >> We'll get do that too. >> Zimmerman: In other words, when you make an area more congested, it's more expensive to fix the street and it will wear out faster and it takes more money. So congestion is expensive. >> Kitchen: Okay. Keep going. >> Any more questions? Do you need time with this one? >> Kitchen: Take a minute for basically the observations here about the districts. Let's see, so one, three and nine share the oldest generally in poor condition. And district 5 is always in the middle of everything. It's interesting. [Laughter]. >> They're all pretty old. >> Kitchen: I was just looking at the conditions. >> Pool: It looks like 8 is the youngest, 24 years. Everything else -- >> Kitchen: I'm looking more at the condition than the age. So that's interesting. So why then is -- so district 9, if I'm hearing you correctly, has a higher, relatively speaking, unsatisfactory, because it's older. Is that generally the reason? >> Well, age is just one of the factors. >> Kitchen: Those are the other factors. >> You have traffic, weather. That's why we do a condition assessment of half the inventory every year because it's constantly changing. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> Pool: And doesn't it also matter how you've done the paving the last time too? [3:48:42 PM] Because there are different qualities of the asphalt? >> I'm going to touch a little bit on what we're trying to do. I mentioned it earlier what we try to do is extend the life of the pavement. There are several tools that we have through our transportation user fee for maintenance. So that's what our program is. When we talk about asset management we're talking about taking this asset and trying to extend the life of that asset until it gets to point we can't maintain anymore and we have to spend a lot of money to reconstruct it. >> Kitchen: One last question on this slide then. Do you all have -- do you have a goal or a target that you try to keep these within? In other words, do you have a target that X percent of the roads will be in satisfactory or -- I don't know -- >> Yeah, we do and that's 80%. And over the last five years we've gone up and down on the 80%. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> We also did some benchmarking but I want to qualify the actual benchmarking, because some of the other cities use different criteria criteria on what abcde and F streets are. I have to give credit to my boss, Robert Goode, of 97% in Fort Worth. I'm not sure how he did that. He will have to share that with us. I do think a lot of the roads in Fort Worth are concrete, right? So it's less maintenance on those and they last a little longer. But this is kind of the benchmark so we're -- >> Pool:. >> Gallo: Can I ask you a question on that comment that I would be interested in? And I think probably Robert has a good expertise in that. How do we evaluate the road reconstruction because obviously it's more expensive to do concrete, but at the same time it lasts longer and probably has less maintenance? >> I'm going to get to that. >> We're getting ahead of you. >> How we prioritize and then we can talk to some of those questions and it talked a little bit [3:50:43 PM] on -- we have a rolling needs assessment. Obviously we don't have the fund to do all of them so that's where the prioritization comes in. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> So there's two forms of maintenance that we do. We do repair maintenance and you hear about potholes, you hear about sections of street repair, so that's part of it, but there's also a preventive maintenance program that we have and both are paid through the transportation user fee. So these are just some of the pictures that we have on some of the routine finance that we have. The biggest factors in a street is water, getting into it, tracking. So we try to cover the cracks. And a lot of these are -- with that in mind they try to put cracks into the cracks as well or just sealing the cracks. As you will see later some have varying costs. These are all the tools in the toolbox that we have so maintain our streets. Overlay is one of the most expensive -- it is the most expensive method and that's where we put a couple of inches of asphalt. We'll take some off, but put it again. We use this method to bring some of the streets that are on the upper range of the D and C streets and improve them and raise their life significantly. The other two that we normally do, now we'll be touching into the capital items, the rehabilitation and the actual reconstruction. And before we get to the reconstruction we evaluate streets to see if we can reconstruct them. You put in curbs, drainage, sewer, new sidewalks, the whole thing. And rehabilitation, I've got some pictures of what we do when we rehabilitate. We probably extend the life by rehabilitating by 30 years. These are a couple of examples of a couple of streets that we [3:52:43 PM] rehabilitated, Harris branch parkway. I'm not sure if anybody has been over there since the late 70s, 80s. It is concrete, but very expansive soils. Some of the curbs had actually sunk to a point where you couldn't see the curbs. So we rehabilitated and rather than spending 15 to $18 million to reconstruct, we subpoena spent a million dollars to rehabilitate and we feel we can get a pretty good life from this particular street. This one most of you may be familiar with, south Lamar. We're in a dilemma of whether do we spend a lot of money because we have the corridor studies coming in, but it was in such bad shape that we had to do something. So we spent another million dollars on this to actually reconstruct it. We have to actually tear all that out and put it back in. It's not a full construction. That's why it's expensive. We do this in-house because we have the ability to do that. So this is the expensive one, the street reconstruction. That's to a point where putting in maintenance is really throwing your maintenance money away. It's not going to improve your street at all. These are some of the streets that we've reconstructed to give you an idea. When we do reconstruction obviously we get transportation and the other departments as well to see if we can just dig once. If we have to add lanes the transportation department will let us know and we'll work with them. This is our residential reconstructions that we actually do one downtown. So this is intended to kind of give you an idea of those streets and the conditions of those streets that we spend our capital money on and we do -- the others we do our o&m and spend our transportation user fee funds on. So you can see we have a lot of tools in our maintenance and operation tools to extend the life of the [3:54:43 PM] streets. I think if you take time to it do this, this is the life cycle of the street and depicts where we spend the money and the causes really for the deterioration for the street. I don't know if you've had a chance to look at this. We've determined quantitatively that if we spend a dollar of maintenance we could save five or six dollars in the longer term and that was the intent. If we maintain our streets they'll last 80% longer in a 40% drop in quality. And I think it's a pretty good slide to give an idea of what we're dealing with with some of these streets. Once it gets to reconstruction we've kind of lost the street. This is intended to typically what we do to extend the life of the street. Surface treatment. We extend the life a little bit, but it still continues to deteriorate and at about 30 years is when we start doing the overlay and it will bring it up and bump it back up. But over time regressively the street will continue to deteriorate. In some cases with hope to get a 70 year life out of it. So this is what we've done in the last 10 years for preventive maintenance. This does not include any of the -- of our street repairs or potholes or level-ups or very basic repairs of our streets. So you can see we tried in the last 10 years, we've covered a lot of the city. As part of this condition assessment, we come up with a preventive maintenance plan yearly and we actually put it out five years. The second, third, fourth year are kind of very dynamic, but we'll know by the time the budget is approved the maintenance plan for the following year. And we can start doing [3:56:47 PM] all the pre-preventive maintenance work that we need to do to get that going. So this is where we'll be going work this year, roughly speaking, of the different types of work that we do. So we do touch a lot of the districts at the same time. I mean, those are things that we work on doing. And these are the costs. We talked about costs a little earlier, to give you an idea of the general costs to reconstruct all the way to maintenance. You look on your left we show what we can do with capital money and below that is our transportation user fee. And this is going to get a little technical so I'm going to kind of skip through that. If you have any questions after you read it you can feel free to ask. >> Kitchen: Okay. Likewise on this one. I'm not sure I need to spend a lot of time on very basic stuff. So we're going to go -- now we're going to get into the process of how we actually prioritize. We have a pavement management information system. We dump all the data we collect from our consultant on the condition of the street and that's when we can start playing around and developing our maintenance plan, but also start developing our reconstruction projects and rehabilitation projects as well, developing the needs assessment. So that gives us the first idea, the PMIs gives us the first idea of the streets and what condition, what we're going to do with them. So the coordination process in the past is we already have design in the pipeline because in every bond package we like to include design money that way when the next bond package comes along we'll have projects that are within the six to nine months to actually be ready for construction. So that's been our process going forward. [3:58:49 PM] And this was the part where we're probably going to have to get some input from council on what those priorities, we've we're going to give you our priorities and reasons for those. And then one of the things that I -- I don't want to leave out that is very critical that we do a lot of coordination with the other utilities that make sure that we identify a street and we have funding for reconstruction of that street that we coordinate with the other utilities to make sure that they check their assets if they need to be replaced so we can just go in once. Do you have any questions on this one? >> Kitchen: I have a question. So the PMIs, it's, like, identifying the needs, right? >> Right. >> Kitchen: So when you're doing that, you're focusing on primarily the condition of the road, right? >> Correct. >> Kitchen: Which is the a- f we talked about earlier. >> Right. >> Kitchen: Okay. So how does the -- I guess -- I guess it's the other overlapping circles that are where you end up prioritizing because I'm thinking in terms of other priorities, for example, the corridor studies, the improvement -- the curb improvements or sidewalk improvements or, you know, intersection improvements and things like that. That all feeds in. Is that what we're seeing here in terms of utilities and infrastructure coordination. >> Correct. We'll start working with the various departments. I mentioned earlier about transportation being a big part of that. There's an intersection that needs to be included in the reconstruction, that that's included as well. Sidewalks are normally in a full reconstruction are also included. We take what is the typical cross- sections needed in these neighborhoods and we'll include that in the reconstruction plans. So make sure that we cover everything. Certainly don't want to build [4:00:50 PM] something now and come back later and utility has to replace a line. And I think we've gone pretty -- gotten pretty good at that. Everybody has been very cooperative in this aspect. >> Kitchen: I guess, what I think I've -- answered my question, but what I'm getting at is, you know, at the beginning we talked about, I don't know, about seven, eight, nine, ten, whatever, different categories for transportation, where -- and these are categories where transportation or public works has C.I.P. Dollars. So each one of those categories has their own way in which they prioritize the needs. So when we look at where we're spending our money, basically we're looking -- we may focus first on a road that overlaps all of these needs. Does that make sense? I mean, so what you're really doing is although each one of these categories has its own priority and its own criteria, at the end of the day, what rises to the top is the one that has the most criteria? Is that -- I mean, am I oversimplifying it or is that how it works. >> No. That's the way if works point something to note, what with a is driving this really is the need to reconstruct the street because it's failing and then we do the coordination with everybody else. So this is the main driver. This is part of our asset management process. If that answers some of your question. >> Kitchen: I guess. So if we're -- but if we're -- you know, the -- I guess I'm taking it a step up in terms of if we're thinking about where to spend dollars or actually the recommendation that's come to us from transportation/public works it's, like, we can spend dollars on reroad reconstruction or maintenance or we can spend dollars on corridor planning or safe intersections or we can spend dollars on, you know, all the different categories and so there's a process for deciding which -- which one of those [4:02:53 PM] categories. >> Right. >> Kitchen: Am I making sense here? >> You have a bond committee that probably is gonna help you with doing that. >> Kitchen: That helps do that. That's balancing the needs and balancing the priorities. >> Yes. >> Kitchen: All right. Go ahead. >> Garza: This is the current process of how projects are prioritized? Is that what you're saying? >> The only thing that was previously missing was kind of the council priorities because we just kind of used it as an asset management process. We already have project over design so we just had them in the pipeline to get done, based on strictly the asset management process. >> Garza: So previously priorities are based on what you put in this calculator that told you it was priorities, but is this a new process that you will take to council input? >> That's what we were tasked to do. Actually we don't have any funding for construction of any of our failing streets until the next bond election comes up and whenever y'all approve that so that's what I said, we already have some design projects, so many streets that are already in the design process because that's normally what we do. >> Garza: But what if the priority -- let's say number 1 on the list right now is not a priority of council. How does that change something? >> Well, one of the things that we haven't done yet is brought you, I guess, this list and we have to work on that process. >> This will be for the next program, '17-'18. This is capital projects. The 2016 Clyde no capital -- included no capital renile so there's no funding for what Robert is talking about. The idea would be typically in the past we haven't taken council priority in because we didn't have that district base. Now there's a value obviously to have district input into -- if you have a 100 streets that need reconstruction and Robert takes a great job on Robert works saying now we're gonna look at the waterlines and [4:04:54 PM] everything else, we can also go to council and say you've got a hundred streets, what are your priorities? Because we're not gonna be able to fund a hundred streets. We might fund ten in your district. Now we'll be able to take your input in that mix, matrix, calculator as you said as one more piece of input to help us prioritize the program that comes forward. Because we have so many needs you're -- we don't have enough funds to complete all the -- all that work at once so we're gonna have to make some choices. >> Kitchen: So once you've done the objective criteria, the more objective measurement type of criteria, and you've got a set of projects that are really equivalent, you know, in terms of their objective need. >> Exact. >> Kitchen: -- Then you might hear from the public or council in terms of, well, really in this district people use this street more as opposed to this street or there maybe some subjective types of input that the councilmembers can provide. >> That's right. >> Kitchen: Once you've applied the technical criteria. >> And Robert has done a good job also looking at neighborhoods. Sometimes I'll have priority one, three, five right next door to priority ten. Well, let's just do it all at once rather than -- and it's all part of the mix, and that's what Robert is trying to show you, is that we take all that into account, but it still is -- gonna have to be a choice, we try to take all that input in with your help now moving forward. That's the exciting part about it, you will be able to help us. There's ten roads in your district. We can only do five. All these ten are pretty high priority. Which five do you think are more important? >> Garza: So you will meet with each councilmember separately? >> That's right. >> Kitchen: Did that answer your question? Okay. >> Gallo: Obviously, the controlling factor here is funding. Do we have opportunities for these type of projects from state and federal funds? I mean, is there any state and federal programs and money that are available that we're -- that we should be [4:07:01 PM] advocating for and aggressively looking for? I know when we went through the budget process, one of the funding positions that I believe got funded was that -- that person within the department that would actively look at funding sources, federal and local. Because I think we are missing some of those opportunities. >> We typically don't have anybody full-time to look at it but in the industry if something does come up we'll pursue it. We haven't been successful in identifying anything for reconstruction of streets. There may be some for sidewalks and that nature. >> Kitchen: I think maybe Robert you can speak to that. We did furnished a position. I'm not sure where y'all -- >> Gallo: Collaborates between the different departments. >> Kitchen: I'm not sure where y'all are in looking for that person. >> We will be starting that search now. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> Hoping to choose a person and bring a person on right after the start of the calendar year. Federal grants or state grants typically are restricted to on-system roadways, even reconstruction, but there are rehab dollars, sometimes federal for bridge structures or major roadway reconstruction, certainly emergency funding if there's a disaster or whatever. So there's opportunities. My understanding of the federal funding area is it's typically for new capacity or new enhancements, where it goes off the interstate system or off the state system. So the answer is yes, we'll have a person. We'll be looking for funds. We call it opm, other people's money, to bring to the table. And that may require us to match and that also fits into this recommendation that we'll be bringing forward to you. >> Gallo: So I'm assuming one of the projects that this person will undertake, first of all, is to evaluate our roads that would qualify for these different things. I mean, I'm -- your comment [4:09:02 PM] about off the interstate, major roadways, we've had conversation about city -- and then to actively pursue those funds to be able to help our dollars go further. >> Right. I agree, councilmember. >> Gallo: All right. Thank you. >> Kitchen: Go ahead. >> The rest of the slides are just part of the coordination process that we actually do with the other departments. >> Kitchen: Okay. Yeah if you could speak to those. Back up for just a moment. Let's talk for a minute about the coordination process. So this is what goes on with across departments, right? >> Right. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> Outside departments because we also work with the franchises. >> Kitchen: Okay. So the annual service -- oh, that goes back to what Ed van eenoo was telling us about, the annual service plan, okay. Do y'all have anymore questions from councilmembers? What about, you know, Robert had asked us early on, Mr. Goode had asked us early on if there were other areas that we wanted to drill down on. Is it possible to go back to that first slide that lists the departments? And just take a minute to ask -- >> That's a long way. That's a lot of slides. >> Kitchen: Sorry. It's a long way. Back at the beginning. >> Zimmerman: Chair kitchen, I do have one other technical question for engineering expert here, and that's if anybody has tried to quantify the effect of densification, you know, dramatically increasing density and having more people use the same roadways and, say, having more busses and more heavier vehicles on a road that was designed with a certain road base 50 years ago, right, assuming a not dense area? Has anybody done some analysis on this? Because it's one of the costs of increasing density for an area that may not have been designed for density. >> The pavements deteriorate [4:11:03 PM] faster the heavier the vehicle used, mostly for busses and for trucks, than passenger. So it does impact the cycle, life cycle, of a roadway. >> Zimmerman: You're right. But it's about road design, right? I can design my road base to be a lot thicker and make my pavement thicker to help seal out water. I can design my road for heavier traffic. >> Right, Robert design a roadway in a residential neighborhood differently than north Lamar. >> Zimmerman: Absolutely. That's my point as we do imagine Austin and add density has anybody kind of quantified what that could do to our road infrastructure. >> Probably not. >> Zimmerman: Probably not. >> Which slide did you want to go back to? >> Kitchen: I think it's, like, the first one, atd program funded through C.I.P. There you go. Next one. So I think that one -- I think I mentioned before the ask that I would make, and you can tell me if it's -- if it sounds doable, and that is just to -- for each of these programs to understand what the major criteria are for each of them. Like we talked -- >> Street grades and those things on what -- how we assess the inventory for each one? >> Kitchen: Yeah. What are the technical requirements that move it up? So that's what I'd be interested in. At some point I might be interested in more detail on sidewalks, although we've had a fair amount of conversation about sidewalks and safety. Is there anything that anyone else would -- I mean, you guys can think about it, but is there anything that you would like to -- Ms. Garza. >> Garza: Can we go back to the maps of the districts. That one. So as part of the criteria, is the -- I got a little confused [4:13:04 PM] when you said that this is different from maintenance because my assumption was there's some blue and green here that used to be red, but now they're blue or green. So is time that a road is red part of the equation? Because you mentioned like Harris Glen or Harris something, that it had been that way for 15 years. And so I'm curious if -- specifically William canyon, right on this map and as long as I've lived in southeast Austin it's been -- east of 35 has been in really bad shape. Is -- and then we saw Lamar be in bad shape. Is the time that it's red affect when it gets repaired? >> It does. And if you're asking how we go back and get the history of how it changed, we can do that. If you're asking specifically on William Connon--- >> Garza: No, more about is the time a road is red -- >> If it's red then it's on our needs list. >> Garza: But I'm saying if road a has been red for ten years versus road B red for 15 years, is road B higher than road a? >> Those are indicative of an index and that index has a range and the higher -- I guess the closer to eight or nine, those are little better. There's some that can't maintain anymore, we can't do anything anymore more them because we're just throwing our money away. So if it's a failed red street it needs reconstruction if it's a D street, the top end that, we can probably save and extend the life. So if it's been there for a long time, it's in our needs assessment, it's gonna have to be reconstructed. As y'all saw we have about 1700 lane miles of streets that we need to reconstruct, and we just have to go based on numerical, what we've been doing in the past. >> Garza: But is the component [4:15:06 PM] of the time it's been in bad condition a criteria. >> Kitchen: Does it factor in? Is it factored in in some way in the ranking of feeds? >> How long it's been in the red? Is that what you're saying? >> Kitchen: Yes. >> I'll look at that. >> Typically, that's not a factor. I think you're right, it should be, but typically pavement systems don't look at who is weight -- has waited the longest for funding. I think equity officer and as we look for -- I think that will be -- can become factors on many things. >> Garza: Okay. >> Typically, pavement systems don't -- they don't look at that. There's so many needs. They look at what waterline has to go in because -- you see my point. So the answer is no, typically that's not part of the equation. >> Garza: Thank you. And that's a big equity issue. So I would hope that whatever new process that comes along takes that into account, how long a road has been red. Thanks. >> Kitchen: Yeah. That would be -- on the circles that we looked at earlier from -- I think that Ed went through, when you went from identifying needs to the lrcsp, that's where -- or maybe even to where you're identifying funding, somewhere in that process is where you could apply those kinds of factors. >> You're going the wrong way, Robert. It's the other way. >> Kitchen: It's earlier. But that's okay. It's the capital improvement program cycle, where it starts -- you know, there's identifying needs and then there's lrcsp, which I don't remember what it stands for. >> Long range capital. >> Kitchen: Long range plan, finally you get to the five-year plan. Somewhere in that process, the factor like councilmember Garza is mentioning seems like would -- >> That's where it should come, is that equity lens will be inserted in that process, you're right. >> Kitchen: Okay. Other questions? All right. [4:17:06 PM] Thank you all very much. This is very helpful. What we'll do is I do know tht I'd like to understand the list of criteria, and then I'm sure that others will have questions, and we'll let you know when it makes sense or -- or, you know, to add anymore to -- you know, to take up any of these other areas in the future meetings. >> We can give you a written report on all those programs and the criteria we use and then y'all can absorb that and tell us if you'd like more information or a briefing on any one of those. >> Kitchen: That would be great. It might also be helpful, if you can, to the extent that there are criteria that are applied through those processes of identifying needs, the long-range strategy plan, identifying funding and five-year C.I.P. Planning anywhere through those processes, if -- to the extent that there are criteria applied, if those could be shared also, that would be helpful. >> Sure. >> Kitchen: Okay. Did you have a question? All right. Thank you very much. That was very helpful. Appreciate y'all's time. I know that y'all are in the middle of a lot of other planning right now. Something called a bond, $720 million bond. So appreciate you taking the time to bring this to us. Okay. Our next item will be -- we're gonna go back now to item number 4, which is a briefing and discussion with possible action on roadway speed reductions and potential pilot program per the council resolution that adopted the vision zero action plan. >> Good afternoon, committee members, ear he can, Austin transportation, managing engineer. Also today with me -- I'll be leading the presentation. We also have two others from our systems development and active transportation divisions. >> Kitchen: Let me say we have a number of people signed up to speak but we'll go ahead [4:19:07 PM] with the presentation first. >> Okay. Just overall recap of the action plan for vision zero that was passed earlier this year. It really looks at a multipronged approach, in some ways kind of going back to those E's a lot are familiar with, looking at that link between lane use and transportation infrastructure that's out there, and also the engineering and design that goes with building and designing the streets. Also the other component is the enforcement prosecution, and the education, culture change, if you will, kind of changing behaviors to kind of get the desired outcomes that we want in terms of improving safety on our streets. So data can tell us a lot, looking at the past four years, roughly 2010-2014, about 80% of all crashes can be summed up in six contributing factors, at least the reports that list the factors, everything from improper lane movements, distracted driving, things we see everyday, speeding, impairment, failure to stop. And, you know, that old saying that speed kills? Well, yeah the data does support it. These are numbers about -- in terms of fatalities, if a pedestrian is hit no more than 20 miles an hour, that person is very likely to survive. It goes down looking at the speed of the crash involved. If we also tattle factoring in -- take a look at factoring in serious injuries, 30 miles an hour alone is the break point between somebody surviving a serious injury or fatality. Once you look at serious injuries that's another thing we have to take into consideration. The benefits of lowering speeds like I said improving safety, greater use of active transportation. Recognizing within the context of certain streets if other [4:21:08 PM] modes besides vehicles is appropriate, we don't want excessive speeds to be a did he renter for people using the streets. There's kind of a common perception if you reduce some speed limits, that will have a great effect on travel times, just put it in sort of mathematical terms. If you take a look at lowering at least over the span of a mile, the difference between going 30 miles an hour and 25 miles an hour is less than 30 seconds. And in terms of a neighborhood context, I'd say most residents can get out of their neighborhood or at least get to a arterial that borders their neighborhood within a mile, just to kind of give it in terms of context, we're not talking about a large difference in travel times there. So to focus on one of the action, number 44, work at the local and state level to lower default spreadsheet limits congruent with research on speed and best practices, and also the resolution, just to hit highlights, staff was directed to analyze practices related to establishing speed limits, looking at all types of streets, here it's referenced primary, secondary, neighborhood streets, and looking at opportunities to reduce those speeds and possibly looking at pilot projects. And I think I was up here last week, city council, with some of these speed limits. As I described 85th percentile speed is where the prevailing standard practice in engineering and what's told to us by state law. Looking at the speed at which 85% of people are driving at or below. With the thought that most people pick a speed that's safe and per the conditions of the street, and per state law, through an urban area, which most of city of Austin would fall under, the prima facie [4:23:09 PM] spreadsheet, gallaudet speed is 30 miles an hour. Some of the practices for lowering speeds, there is a section in the Texas traffic laws that does allow cities to change speeds to 25 miles an hour. The city actually did this probably about a decade ago. We started tackling neighborhoods. And along with the requirements under this section, the cities are required to submit data showing at least the number of crashes, number of citations, speed, before and after. So that's one method that -- for lowering speed limits that we do have already on the books. The procedures that I mentioned earlier, along with 85 percentile speed we can go lower, 70 miles an hour or more, if the crash rate is greater than statewide average. A lot of times what spurs a lot of our evaluations for looking at changing speed limits is really looking at -- re-checking, you know, after span of -- over many years, it seems like we pick on north Lamar as an example but that's a street designed as a state highway over the years, a lot of development has happened, and sometimes it does make sense to take a look at the context of the street, see if it's changed, see if a lower speed is appropriate. And the final portion of changing speed limits results is related to school Zones. >> Kitchen: Let me ask you one question. On the rechecks of speed Zones, so this is the criteria for when you can use that to justify lowering? Is that right? >> Right, right. If we look at it, if -- I think that there's reason to reevaluate a speed limit that's been set five, ten, sometimes a -- a lot of times more years than that, we can take a look and take a look at the context. What we find is really the [4:25:11 PM] context of the street really drives the speed, you know, what the surroundings are telling the driver, not necessarily the sign itself. So it could be that the sign is -- can change to reflect the 85 percentile speed alone from just the changes of the street. >> Kitchen: Does that have to be -- what is the process? And I guess my question really is, does that have to be -- does it have to be approved? In other words, does the city have the authority to just do the analysis and decide to lower, or under state law does that have to be approved by. . . Like if we were gonna lower -- we did a recheck of the speed zone and thought that it was justified to lower, do we get to make that decision? >> We do in terms of if there's an engineering study backing it and it's not going, say, below 30 miles an hour default speed. I think going to 25 miles an hour goes to that first method there, it's pretty specific if you're going under 30. Taking a look at an arterial that's fully under city of Austin's jurisdiction, city staff can conduct a report with a recommendation to lower or raise the speed limit. >> Kitchen: But not below 30 is what you're saying? >> Correct. Unless -- in terms of 25 miles an hour there's some criteria for those streets, has to be less than 36 feet wide, no parking restrictions, fewer than four lanes of travel. So they're pretty specific in state law about when that can be invoked and followed. >> Kitchen: Okay. In that case that's what txdot has to approve, is lowering to 25? >> No. If it's -- >> Kitchen: I guess what I'm getting at -- what I'm getting at is who approves our decision, and when do we have to have to approved as opposed to us just being able to decide? >> Councilmember, if -- we're of course a jurisdiction within the state of Texas so we have the authority to set [4:27:13 PM] speed limits on roads when it is a txdot roadway co-owned by txdot or owned by txdot, we're required to cooperate. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> Now, they, too, can do -- they're a jurisdiction. They can do the study, and the law says cooperate, but when they say they're gonna set a speed limit, they have the authority to set it regardless of whether we agree or not agree with it. They tend not to do that. They don't like to do that. They like to work with us to get to a coordinated agreement on the speed. That allows us to come to y'all and change a speed limit in the ordinance so that the ordinance matches the speed limit that txdot decides on their roads. But on our streets, you know, we can set the speeds. That said, state law gives us some limitations. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> Going down to 25 miles an hour, as Eric said, the street has to have certain characteristics. You heard one is unrestricted parking. That's to help set the character of that street as a slower street. Best way I can explain how the character of the surrounding lane use affects speed, think of Lamar in the central part, once you're north of the football stadium there's really nothing to slow you down on either side. There's parkland and hills, really cars travel faster. As soon as they get up to the hospital area, bio, they slow down, not just because of congestion but it would feel pretty strange trying to drive through that area at the same speeds they were comfortable with down near the park. That's really the example of how land use really influences it, and when we detect that traffic or believe that traffic is moving slower than what the posted speed limits are, because you'll always have one or two people that try to drive the speed limit, we'll come back in and that's when we do the speed studies. So it's really on a case-by-case basis. [4:29:14 PM] >> Kitchen: Okay. >> So this practice of looking at -- evaluating potentially reducing urban speed limits is one that's being embraced by other vision zero cities, there are approximately 17 nationwide and about that many are also considering to be vision zero cities. We'll take a look at three in particular, New York, Boston, Seattle. They all recently lowered their default speeds on streets citywide. This did take state legislation changes. But they were successful. You know, specific examples, New York, they established some neighborhood slow Zones but they did -- one thing important to note is they did pare that with traffic calming devices so more than putting a sign in a neighborhood, they tried to put something on the streets that would change the character and really reinforce that slower speed that was the goal. Again, in Boston, you know, there are some 15-mile-an-hour Zones around parks and schools, and Seattle did a similar approach, where they looked at ten areas and coupled that with traffic calming. And so in terms of our recommendations, right now the city of Houston, part of their legislative agenda is to reduce their prima fascia speeds on residential or they're calling neighborhood streets from 25 to 30. So one of our recommendations is to support city of Houston and pursue something similar for Austin. The second one is the street design guide that's currently in draft that staff is working on. This is really a precursor to the transportation criteria and manual changes that will come in the future, but this is really looking at -- really taking a better focus on matching the context with the design of the street, really looking at a target speed. [4:31:17 PM] Traditionally, talking about north Lamar, okay, it was designed at a higher speed, but maintain context -- maybe the context, maybe other things weren't changed. A lot of times what is posted is five, 10 miles below what actually the design of the street is. And so rather than giving that mixed message to road users, you know, trying to put in line as best we can that target speed with what we design the speed -- design the street to be. So it's looking at the network role, what is the street's function, the context, the surrounding, the functions, recognizing not every street will necessarily carry every mode but those we do expect and hope that the street design facilitates that. And, again, looking at context, where -- okay, is it appropriate for all neighborhood streets to be 20? Possibly. Is it appropriate for our highways to be 20? Well, no. So, you know, we always have to -- always have to keep in mind the context of the street. There could be arterials that are in the same vicinity, given the context of one, maybe one is walkable, commercial, maybe south congress, maybe that justifies a lower speed limit than another arterial. And so the recommendation being evaluate arterial speed limits for appropriateness citywide. This goes back to we likely have inconsistent speed limits in terms of design and context around the city. You know, we want to be sure that we're giving the same message to all our drivers. They shouldn't necessarily have to guess what the speed limit is. They should say, okay, it feels like this, feels like another street, so the speed limit is 30, 35. So it's being consistent, given the similar operational and design characters of streets. Fourth one is slow zone pilot. This would be a project or projects. Here's an example of one in Seattle, near downtown, also near a school where it's pretty clear that there's a defined area of 20 miles an hour. [4:33:18 PM] So the pilot would be a project possibly two or more neighborhoods defined as a certain boundary, go through a public process, really looking at the data in terms of crash data to help inform the areas that we would look at. But we'd follow that code that I referenced earlier about reporting the effectiveness of the speed limits, the number of crashes. And, again, piloting -- this pilot would pair it with traffic calming. Here's some examples of some in Austin that we have. But really looking at the design of the streets. We want -- if we want to pilot, we want it to be successful, and this is one tool we think we have to make it successful. And, again, looking at the number of citation, traffic citation, warning citation, speed-related crashes. Summary, support legislative efforts, to lower the prime afascia speed to 25 miles an hour, target -- TCM, look at speed limits we have citywide for appropriateness, establish slow zone pilots. I'd say the first two are underway in one way or another. Number 3 and four, we need more analysis and action to be taken. So thank you. If you have -- >> Kitchen: Thank you very much. We have a number of speakers. Did you want to say something? >> I just wanted to point out another thing we were talking about prioritizing capital budgets earlier. Right now under current legislature -- legislative capability to do a slow zone, which we're recommending to, do we have to sign it pretty heavily. All the streets that are below a certain -- below what we would normally assume is the prima fascia, we have to sign. The Houston approach, which seeks to change the prima fascia speed really also is a [4:35:20 PM] cost market value as well. Most of our arterials, even if they are at the prima fascia speed of 30 miles an hour, are already signed to remind drivers on those arterials they need to drive 30 miles an hour. Actually, it would save us from having to put a lot more signage out. We could do a much more general education, broader education, signs at the entrance to the city, saying, hey, we're, you know, 25-mile- an-hour speed city or whatever the case might be, but just economically it would be, I believe, more achievable as well. Because it's simpler to explain. >> Kitchen: Okay. Thank you. Go ahead. >> Garza: The slow zone, I don't remember how this was brought to me. Someone on my staff -- maybe a constituent suggested it but there's other cities of that done a weird number, thinking that it causes attention, like 18 or 19, that grabs drivers' attention. Is there any -- then I've heard -- I googled it to see, you know, what cities had done that, and then there's 'nother side of the argument that people don't pay attention anyway, didn't make a difference. I'm wondering if there's any studies now that show those do make a difference and if they do if our staff is considering those. >> Those I'm not familiar with. I would imagine that they would get attention and then people would probably fall back to what their accustomed to or habits. I think even per state laws it says it would be ending in a five or zero, in terms of setting a speed limit so I don't know if -- maybe other cities are doing it. I'm not sure how they are doing it or if they are truly doing it. We have limitations. >> Garza: I think it was Albuquerque but it's something to look into if it changes people's behavior for the better. I know we have a -- never mind. >> Kitchen: Interesting idea. >> Councilmember, you're correct, it is abba concerning can I, put in a 19-mile-an-hour speed limit. >> Kitchen: Thank you. We'll hear from speakers now. [4:37:21 PM] >> Zimmerman: Could I ask another quick question along that same line? So quickly, in the people I talked to, constituents, I didn't hear a single person say speed limits needed to be reduced. What I heard virtually all of them say is the existing limits are not enforces. Very upset with that, especially some neighborhoods that are annexed against their will, like Anderson mill, Williamson county and they had deputies, and I heard widely that when they had a speed paperwork sometimes a new neighbor would move in from Florida or California, somebody speeding, and they would phone up Williamson county sheriff's office, somebody would come out, they'd write a few tickets and the problem would subside. After they got annexed, no more enforcement of the speed limits. That's the feedback. I think they would scoff at this idea because people don't follow the limits we have now and they can't get enforcement now. >> Thank you, councilmember. Enforcement is one of those required to get good behavior. One of the things about moving the prima fascia from 30 to 25 is often people won't be driving drastically faster than 30, they'll be 31, 32, not to say any police force has a lien yensy, but even in your speedometer there's variability. It is much easier to tell when somebody is driving six or 7 miles over the speed limit rather than two. And so if we know that 25 and 20 ends up injuring fewer people, the closer we can get the better. 25-mile-an-hour speed limit it's pretty easy to pick up someone with a radar gun with assurance they're going 32, whereas if the speed limit is 30, 32 is proportionality worse than 30 as if 30 to 20. It grows ex,oh, potentially. So that's another benefit. It makes it easier to enforce. [4:39:22 PM] >> Zimmerman: And of course the other thing that was never mentioned is the loss of time and productivity collectively of people driving 5 miles per hour faster, multiplied by tens of thousands of people, making hundreds of thousands of trips. You've government people a lot of lost time having to be in their car because they can't go as fast and people are complaining that we're already in gridlock. They want things to move faster, not slower. >> Kitchen: There's a lot of different perspectives on that. Let's hear from our speakers now. We have two mics. If you would come up and combo back and forth that way. First is [indiscernible] And then Hayden walker. And, Hayden, you can come up to the other mic. >> Good afternoon. My name is car la [indiscernible], coordinator for safe kids Austin, committed to reducing childhood injuries. We are led by Dell children's medical center and unintentional injuries is the leading cause of death for adults and children in Travis county and pedestrian injury is one of the top ten causes -- injury death for kids under age ten. [Indiscernible] So from 2013 to 2015, we've seen a total of 118 children have come and been admitted to Dell children for pediatric injuries and these reason admissions so more on the Ed but 118 were serious enough to be admitted. Based on a quick data poll this year we've had 21 seen at Dell children for pediatric injuries and half of them, 11 had injuries serious enough to be admitted to the hospital. We're working on ways to prevent these injuries from happening. We know children are July internal road users, small, hard tore drivers to see, they have developmental limitations [4:41:22 PM] so really can't understand how to navigate traffic safely. They often don't judge the speed of cars correctly, don't know how long it takes them to cross the street, and they also move somewhat impulsively or quickly so might jump out in front of traffic without being aware of the traffic there. In fact the most common type of pedestrian injury to children is midblock caused by dashing out or darting out in front of traffic. So we know that changing children's behavior is quite tough given their developmental limitations so the best way to really improve child pedestrian safety is through changing the road environment. One way to do that is by reducing speed, and as recommended by the American academy of pediatrics, as one way through a multipronged approach of really to increase safety for children. And in their position statement they showed roads that have 30-mile-an-hour speed limits there's a seven fold increase in risk for children to be hospitalized from pediatric injury compared to 20 miles per hour. And we know that cars going a slower speed will have more reaction time. So if a child does dart out in front of traffic, they'll have more time to be able to slow down. They also say that neighborhoods that have a large number of streets with low speed limits have much less common -- or injuries are much less common for children in those neighborhoods. So safe kids Austin is really supportive of any efforts to improve the safety of the roads for children, which would include doing a pilot study to figure out if we can lower speed limits and what that would look like and any other way to increase traffic calming or reducing speed limits in neighborhoods. Thank you. >> Kitchen: Thank you very much. Hayden. After Hayden will be Lauren crestwell. Lauren, you can come down. >> Hi, I'm Hayden black walker, a member of the pedestrian advisory council. I was glad to see you got the resolution we passed. [4:43:23 PM] I'm also a 2016 walk college fellow. There are 256 us across the U.S. And we've gone through rigorous training. I was recently invited by txdot and federal highway to participate in crafting what's called the Texas strategic highway safety plan. And we had our kick-off meeting and it was really because they've really gone through and evaluated a lot of crash data that txdot keeps statewide. There were probably, I don't know, 60, 75 people in the room representing police, city police forces, dps, ems, transit agencies, local jurisdictions from across the state. It was pretty interesting discussion. I wanted to go over for a minute a couple of the things that tti said in their presentation. I won't go through all of it because it was a very lengthy presentation, but there were some things that really jumped out at me. I'm a native austinite and native Texan and there were things I didn't know about Texas. And in 2015, last year, 3,531 people died on Texas roads. Texas has the most traffic fatalities of any state in the nation. Traffic crashes are the number 1 killer of children in Texas and young adults from ages one to 24. That's over all other diseases. For every fatality there are about five times as many incapacitating, very serious, life-changing injuries. Across Texas ems is dispatched every seven seconds and November 7, 2000, which is now more than 16 years ago, was the last day in Texas we had a day with no fatality on our roads. Which I find kind of horrifying. So we've talked about it a little bit but I'll reiterate, the human body is made to withstand an impact of 18-19 miles an hour. [4:45:24 PM] That's because that's the fastest people can run. I can't run that fast but some people can. [ Laughter ] And that's why cars have things like seat belts and airbags and crumple Zones because our bodies aren't made to withstand an impact over about 20 miles an hour. So when a child is crossing a street to get home and that you remember hit at 30 miles an hour, they don't have seat belts and airbags and crumple Zones, and they end up very seriously injured. So when a child is hit at 20 miles an hour they have a 90% chance of surviving that. They may be injured but they probably are gonna survive. At 30 miles an hour there's several things that happen. One of the thing that happens is the faster you go the narrower your field of vision becomes. You'll often hear people talking about the aftermath of a crash. >> Kitchen: Finish your thought. >> Sorry. >> Kitchen: That's okay. >> They'll say I never saw so-and-so, right? The faster you go the more that becomes a problem. At 30 miles an hour the distance to stop doubled to 75 feet and the chance of survival drops to 50%. So I would just encourage us to think about reducing the speed limits. >> Kitchen: Thank you. Next is Lauren, and after Lauren will be Katie deloyce. >> My name is Lauren crest crestwell, our organization -- to improve safety for everyone on our streets and so I'm supportive of the recommendations that staff has made to you today and any efforts in that vein. Because we're acutely aware of the impact that speed has on the safety of our roadways. We're an advocacy group and dedicated to developing solutions to a very complex problem, therefore, we have to focus on a number of different initiatives that span from policy to design, culture, education, transportation, land use, and a number of variables in between there. So we constantly have to have a macro perspective. [4:47:26 PM] We also strive to make this issue of safer streets about people and personal experience because ultimately that's what we're trying to affect positive change for. Brief personal experience, I live in the bend wood neighborhood and I walk, run, bike if that neighborhood every day. I'm lucky enough to leave my car parked at home most of the time. My bus route goes past sunshine community garden just down the street and in -- there's a speed limit side on its small entry road and it reads 10 miles an hour and every time I see the sign I get a big smile on my face because I love seeing it because to me the garden is a community gathering space and it's an extension of the neighborhood and a place where people go to connect to cultivate and exchange. And the people that gather there care about the community they themselves have created. So there's an expectation of a feeling of comfort and safety that has to be upheld so when you're driving through there you're expected to respect -- expected to respect that sense of safety and simply go slow. Whenever I see that garden and see that sign I think to myself, isn't this the kind of culture of exchange and social interaction and of connection that exists in that garden exactly how we want our neighborhoods to feel? Shouldn't we expect that that comfort, closeness and safety be respected in our neighborhoods in the same way it is in that slow moving space at the community garden? I think you can successfully create that type of desired environment without respect for a sense of safety on the streets that comprise our communities. But what did it really comes down to is fostering that safe space -- and I thank the members of this community -- of this committee for offering leadership to get us closer to making that happen. Thanks very much. >> Kitchen: Thank you very much. Next we have Katie deloyce and after that Lydia. Go ahead. >> Unfortunately, she's not able to unicycle here. [4:49:30 PM] Hi, I'm Katie deloyce, Freud work with the pedestrian advisory council and vision 0atx. We recently moved back to Austin after far too many years swa it's great to be here. I also own atx walks. I'm an American college of sports medicine personal certified trainer, also have an exercise as medicine credential and am a certified walking coach. I love to walk. We are a car-free family by choice. And we home school, and we spend quite a bit of time walking, biking, unicycling and using public transit in the city of Austin. I'm new to this. Right arrow. One of the things I was struck by as I was reading the vision zero pamphlet that was produced with vision 0atx is the words enabled. When I think of the word neighborhood, oftentimes you kind of get this image of this idyllic, you know, clean cut, everything is perfect, neat and tidy. This is my neighborhood. This is [indiscernible] Intersecting with south congress. This was four cars involved in a crash because somebody -- crash because somebody chose not to chill for a sec and wait. Instead she ended up causing some serious problems. My husband and daughter were standing at the corner and this happened right in front of them. We need to lower the speed limits. This is my neighborhood. It's red hot and not in a good way, and I would really like to see that crash number go down due to lowered speed limits. That would be outstanding. My family and I, we are walkers. We are bikers. We are part of this community that commutes by transportation methods other [4:51:30 PM] than cars. Now, from my perspective, as a personal trainer, as someone who is very focused on human physiology, when we're sitting in cars for extended opposed periods of time, getting from point a to point B, we're ending up with a serious public health problem. Now as we see obesity rates are going to go up and I believe councilmember Zimmerman was talking about economic costs. Obesity currently costs Texas employers more than $9.5 billion annually with the number projected to grow to 32.5 billion by 2030. 80% of individuals who are obese as children will continue to be obese into adulthood, that is directly associated with people sitting in cars, not getting out and walking or not feeling safe enough to be able to walk in their local communities, in their neighborhoods. [ Buzzer sounding ] So all that to say, I invite you to join me, to join my family, as we walk. This Saturday I'm doing a [indiscernible] From congress at slaughter all the way up to congress and 19th and we're gonna take a nice long walk to see what it's like. I did outwalk America's doc. Thank you. >> Kitchen: Thank you very much. So, lid yeah do you want to go -- Lydia, do you want to go next? >> Yeah. Sorry. This is my first time doing public speaking. Thanks. Hi, I'm Lydia, I'm home schooled by my mom, Katie. You might have heard her speak about 30 seconds ago. I live right next to south congress and I've seen a crash before my eyes on that street [4:53:30 PM] in my five mows of living here and I believe that's a problem. The car involved four cars. Here's pictures perfect the crash. Here's some pictures from the crash. Have you seen the sidewalks in the areas near St. Edwards? Some street don't have sidewalks. Here are some pictures. That's St. Edwards. Oh, sorry. Have you seen -- okay. Living on my road and even walking on it can be dangerous. I remember walk to go the bus station and almost being hit by a car turning off south congress into the parking lot. Down if a pedestrian is hit while a car is going 20 miles an hour nine out of ten will survive. 40 miles an hour nine out of ten die. The street seems like it was designed for more than 40 miles per hour. Lanes are wide and less obstacles, the road is completely straight. Crashes seem to happen all the time. For instance my dad got right hooked by a car and did he not sustain injuries. But for many other people in the same situation who knows how many have been killed just because drivers don't pay attention. Thank you. >> Kitchen: Thank you very much for coming to speak to us. [ Applause ] Next we have Jay crossly and then Kathy sacolic after that. >> Hello. Thank you for your service to all the people of Austin. My name is Jay costly, I've been the team leader of the vision zero atx speed team this fall and I'm the vision zero Texas to work for comprehensive multidisciplinary approach to ending the epidemic of traffic deaths. Before the policy details I wanted to thank councilmember kitchen and pool for speaking at the recent day of remembrance along with mayor Adler. Too many families in Austin have to face the sudden tragedy of traffic violence [4:55:31 PM] and so I thank you for your respectful attendance to the issue. And in particular as a district 7 resident I'm very grateful for all that you do to make Austin streets safer, councilmember pool. We're here today to talk about [indiscernible] The greatest toll excessive speed takes on the lives and bodies of Texans for tool we have designed the streets and neighborhoods of Texas to prioritize high speeds for vehicles instead of the lives of Texans. Your neighborhood street is almost certainly designed assuming driving at speeds guarteed to kill pedestrians. But this primarily is not actually an issue for walkers or bikers. Our transportation system is the number 1 cause of death for our children and most of these kids are dying in cars. Texas leads the nation in total traffic deaths every year and of the 24 states with more than [indiscernible] Only Tennessee has the higher rate of traffic death per hundred people. If traffic death were cancer it's the fifth leading cancer in Texas. In the cities of Houston, fort Worth, San Antonio are on board for this bill, to lower the default speed limit. And we need Austin to join the team. And help push for the bill to do as much good as possible. As you've seen your staff have done kind of amazing work studying the issue and bringing you the ability to optimize policies and codes. So we need them to share this knowledge with the legislature and txdot, and I hope perhaps consider pushing further than 25 and - - fort Worth is saying we'd prefer 20 miles an hour as a default, and this is something maybe your staff, Austin staff, can help the legislature consider. And it's crucial to me that we change design speed policy as we lower speed limits. [4:57:31 PM] The goal sass a transportation system where all of us comfortably use it in a safe way, not traffic tickets. People will drive safely on well-designed streets. Our current streets are the opt sit, and they're a form of entrapment, where the design encourages you to drive at deadly speeds and then A.P.D. Is asked to try to sweep up the mess. And we know that that has inequitable impacts on various communities. So to end, safe streets and community policing can be. [ Buzzer sounding ] Commitmently goals and just to end on, there's [indiscernible] Having Austin support this and being able to help the statewide effort could be helpful in the whole legislative process so at least the legislative part, you should talk a lot of time with the design speed they've proposed, but the legislative part, as soon as you can do it would be helpful. Thank you. >> Kitchen: All right. Thank you very much. Thank you. After Kathy will be Mueller nettle. >> Hi, guys, Kathy. I spoke to you guys recently. There's gonna be just a tiny bit of repetition to circle back around. I wanted to thank all of you, councilmember kitchen and the mobility committee, along with the transportation department, vision zero atx for leading this discussion. Safer neighborhood speed limits and street design have always been important to me, living in the Miller neighborhood, I believe in the vision of new urban pedestrian oriented design and even relocated within the Miller development to be closer to all of the things that I can walk to. The work of promoting safer streets became urgent for me in September when my nephew was hit by a truck outside his home. He suffered a lot of injuries, including severe traumatic brain injury left him unable to eat, walk or talk. Ben turned ten on Monday at a rehabilitation facility in Dallas. Some of the family members through a party for him arbitration I party where someone else opened his [4:59:32 PM] presents, someone else blue out . Out his candles. Ben can open his eyes and look around, however we don't know what he can understand. However he didn't look happy when he wasn't given a brownie. The crash has shaken our family and entire community. Hundreds of friends and family members have come do our aid with love both here and in Dallas. This is just one speed related incident in Austin. Imagine all of the people who have been affected in these numbers that were mentioned today by the crashes throughout Texas. This issue is so important. The posted speed limit on Ben's street is 30 miles per hour. It's a long, straight road and it's very easy to go faster than 30. Someone was clocked at going over 50. People forget that there are children, pets, joggers, cyclists everywhere. Better street design could slow down drivers, which I think is a very important part of this discussion is the design of the streets. But if speed limits can be lowered with the legislation, that's all the better. I wanted to say thank you again and support from the mayor, mayor pro tem tovo and all of council has provided -- it's just really meant the world to me. And I would not want to wish this nightmare on another family. And I kind of wanted to address Zimmerman's push back on this and the call that maybe people don't want to slow down. And I get that. We're in Texas. People like to drive their big trucks really fast. I get it. If somebody can't take 20 extra seconds to go through a neighborhood, they can just give me a call. They can come visit us. That's fine. I think that people need to realize that there is a consequence to driving that fast through a neighborhood street. I appreciate your time. >> Kitchen: Thank you very much. And I would certainly agree. I think that most people, if not everyone, would agree with you there. So thank you for - - I know -- >> I can show more pictures, that's fine. >> Kitchen: I know it's not easy and I appreciate you coming to speak to us. After Miller will be [5:01:35 PM] Robert Anderson. >> I'm Kim Haynes, director of bike Austin. I wanted to know that bike Austin whole heart lid supports the reduction of the speed limit by five miles per hour for the reasons spoken of today. I also want to share throughout the mobility bond, public engagement process, I spoke at a number of dozens of community organizations and neighborhood associations and we live in an engaged and opinioniated town and ecosystem's opinions differ on so many different aspects of planning our neighborhoods and our streets, but I don't think I heard a single person say that they wanted cars to be moving faster on the neighborhood streets. And of course, it's almost unanimous that people want to see more traffic calming, more human paced speed outside their homes and I think there's a tremendous ground swell of public support to do something proactive to save lives and prevent tragic stories like that. I was also involved in the effort in New York City to lower speed limits to 25 a number of years ago and the fullback of the depalacio administration and the city was part of making it want. I want you to know it's a months long lobbying effort at the state to push this through because it will take that kind of front with every city in Texas to make that happen. Thanks for your leadership. Ditched thank you. After Robert -- >> Kitchen: Thank you. After Robert our last speaker will be Brendan. >> Madam chairman, council, my name is Robert Anderson. I'm here today representing walk Austin and I serve as vice-chair division chair vision X as well as vice-chair to the advisory council. We have a crisis with pedestrians dying in our streets. Last year we had over 30 people dying. That was over 30% of all traffic fatalities last year and that's not atypical. We know that speed is one of the greatest factors involved in critical and fatal [5:03:36 PM] crashes. It's why this coalition represented here today is pursuing speed. It's one of the very first effort coming out of the adoption of the vision zero action plan. Our ask is twofold. That you pursue the staff recommendations for a pilot program as well as joining this coalition of cities to pursue the lowered default speed limit for urban streets within Texas. This isn't a mere philosophical issue for me. It's personal. In my 36 years of life, I've only not owned a car for three. I've rather only owned a car for three years and in that time I've been struck by drivers four times, the most recent of which was a year and a half ago by a driver who failed to yield the right-of-way. At that time I was staff to the advise I have council and vision zero task force. And if you're curious, that is how I like my irony served. Our city envisions a walkable community. In order to achieve that we need to bring about safe streets and comfort within our street systems. Imagine for a moment walking down south first street or any major street within the city of Austin where the sidewalk abuts immediately the street, where cars are whipping by, drivers routinely going in excess of the speed limit, 35, 40, 45 miles per hour. Where the mirror is overhanging the curb from capital metro buses by your head mere feet away. It's terrifying. The reality is speed matters. That coupled with our speed design results in speeds that virtually guarantee serious injuries or deaths when a crash happens. A tenet of vision zero is that mistakes will happen and that we should design our systems such that when mistakes happen they won't be fatal. The last thought I would observe is many of our streets don't even have sidewalks. As we create this system we are forcing our citizens, our grandparents, our [5:05:36 PM] children to exist and walk in the very streets where drivers are intoxicated, where they are distracted, sleep deprived and yes, speeding too. It's a moral imperative that we continue to address these deficiencies. Thank you very much. >> Kitchen: Thank you. Brendan? >> Council, thank you. I know you've had a long week already. I appreciate your time. I want to start by saying that I would like to offer my full support for what staff has put together and to encourage us to move in this direction. I think the city is moving in the right direction and perhaps ironically, the legislature would help us move in that direction even faster. And I think that this is the time to go after joining with the other cities in the state of Texas on this major imperative. I want to sort of talk a little bit about the sticky wick debt we have here between policy and design. I think it's an important thing to consider. As we move into a direction where we have the opportunity to have a policy that lowers our speed limits, we need to make sure we're not leaving the streets as the current design speeds is going to encourage people, as communicate rightly pointed out, to continue to move in the same direction at speeds we're already moving. Enforcement is not the answer. I think Jay put that really well. We can't hand A.P.D. The problems that we fail to solve through design and we know that the social equity involved with enforcement is going to be deleterious to certain communities and people of color in this community and we can't have that. So that's where design comes in. And I think staff did a fantastic job in their presentation of outlining some speed mitigation devices, retro fits. So we start with new legislation, with new thinking about how road design goes, and we design new roads to be slower. We don't have another situation with the road [5:07:39 PM] design in Mueller. We don't design colony park that way, but we also retrofit the existing roads. We use neck downs, ball arounds. I'm glad we got to have the cip discussion beforehand because there's an opportunity built into that this to incrementally work through and redesign the streets. I encourage everybody to start here, to start with the legislature, to start with the state, but not to rest on the lawyers of that because our work will not have been done with that quick fix. And I pledge my support to helping in any way I can. Thank you. >> Kitchen: Thank you very much. So colleagues, that's our last speaker. Do we have any more questions for staff before -- I intend to make a motion. Do we have any -- no more questions? Okay. So we have -- we're going to come back to this in just a moment. We have -- councilmember Gallo is going to be able to join us so I'll wait for her on that. Let me go back to an item that I didn't discuss before, and that was the calendar for next year. So we have -- we have the dates -- we have six dates set, February 1st, March 1st, may 3rd, June 7th, October 4th and November 1st, I believe it is. So do I have any -- do those dates seem fine? Okay. All right. Then I will take a quick motion on those dates. Do you want to move -- okay. >> Garza: I move the dates you've proposed. >> Kitchen: We have a motion. I'll second. All those in favor? >> Zimmerman: Can you pass that with two votes? >> Kitchen: You can vote for it. >> Zimmerman: I will vote for it. [5:09:39 PM] I won't be here, but for your sake I'll vote for it. [Laughter]. >> Kitchen: Okay. So those will be our dates. And councilmember pool, I understand you may be joining us next year, so hopefully those dates will be fine for you. Okay. Let me go back to the recommendations. And I expect councilmember Gallo to join us shortly. But let me speak through them and I'm going to move that we move forward with all four of these. We can take them separately if you all would like that. Let me go over them again. The first one is to support the legislative efforts introduced by the city of Houston to lower the prima fish is a speed to 25 miles per hour. Now, -- pry ma fascia speed to 25 miles per hour. What would make -- what would we would be voting on so to bring this forward to the full council and we would bring it forward on the 15th. And that would put this recommendation to support the city of Houston into our legislative agenda, assuming the full council voted on it. Now, we have some -- we have some authority within the legislative agenda, but this would specify that. So that would be the item number 1. Item number -- okay. Item number 1, councilmember Gallo, thank you for -- I know your time is limited. Thank you for coming back. I'm making a motion to support the four recommendations and I'm going through them right now. This is on the -- >> Garza: Do you want a second before you move through them? >> Kitchen: All right. Of let's just -- >> Zimmerman: This is a point of order. I'll just let you read them out. If I'm going to vote no on all of them, let's do them all together. >> Kitchen: I'll read them to you and we'll do them all together. The first is to support the legislative efforts introduced by the city of Houston to lower the prima fascia speed to 25 miles per hour. [5:11:41 PM] The second is to have target design speeds in manuals. Ed third is to evaluate arterial speed limits citywide for appropriate speed limits. And the last is to establish a neighborhood slow zone pilot. So I will make a motion that we will bring these forward to faculty council with a recommendation that they pass. Is there a second? We have a second. >> Garza: I have a question. >> Kitchen: Okay. You made -- he might have answered this already. The slow zone, the exact that's given has 20 and then on the slide in the presentation it says 25. So are we doing -- is the pilot 20 or 25? >> It would be 25. Because that's what state law allows today. >> Garza: Got it. >> Council chair, I would ask you to modify your support Houston to support Houston such that the language includes Austin. I would hate for us forget segmented out by population or whatever. >> Kitchen: Yeah. I think that's the intent, but thank you for pointing that out. Okay. >> Zimmerman: I have a question on number 4. The slow speed zone, is that pilot -- what area of the city? Do we know? Where that's proposed to be put? Which district? Which part of the city? >> Good afternoon, Laura deerfield, industry design manager. We have not identified particular neighborhoods at this time. We would be looking to develop criteria and probably a prioritization process as we would expect the number of neighborhoods to meet the criteria developed. And also funding would be a factor as well. >> Zimmerman: So would the neighborhood have the choice on whether they're going to do it or not? Or would that neighborhood be chosen for the neighborhood? And the neighborhood would be told you're going to be a pilot, 25 miles per hour? >> I think we would [5:13:42 PM] propose to take a hybrid approach where the diet would show us where -- the data would show us where the environment in a neighborhood-based approach for a slow zone would produce the best results by way of increasing goals for neighborhood liveability and safety as well as have a public process whereby people living in that area would have a way to participate in that process. >> Zimmerman: Okay. >> Kitchen: Okay. Other questions? Yes, go ahead. >> Pool: Are these items that we would need to add to our legislative package and agenda that we adopted? And if we maybe want to send these down to Franco? >> Kitchen: The first item we would need to add to our legislative agenda. Okay. Are we ready to vote? >> Gallo: I just want to say one thing. As we have worked really closely with neighborhoods to discuss and try to figure out traffic mitigation and how to slow down traffic in neighborhoods, particularly as I think our phone apps have a tendency to send people through neighborhoods when they see major roadways are gridlocked and slowed down that it is important to have the tools. And I think it's really confusing to most citizens why it's not easier to reduce the speed limits and when they understand the process that there has to be an engineering evaluation and then the effective speed that's actually happening on the streets comes into play so that unless the traffic is already going really slow it's almost impossible to lower that. So I think anything that we can do that gives us more opportunities to be able to provide more safety to our neighborhoods is absolutely a direction we should pursue. So thank you for bringing this forward. >> Kitchen: Thank you. Councilmember Zimmerman. >> Zimmerman: Thank you, chair kitchen. I'm going to maybe lump these and speak against them all before I vote no. The frustration I've had here in two years beyond [5:15:43 PM] council and the mobility committee, we have 11, the last time I looked, 11 master plans in this city. We have a master plan for bicycles, a master plan for sidewalks. We even have a master plan for the climate, like that was the city's business. But we don't have a master plan for vehicle congestion relief. And it is the number one complaint we hear all over this city. And so here we are talking about lowering the speed limits, slowing things down. We're already slowed down to a crawl. It's really, really frustrating. And I think speaking for myself as an elected councilmember, I talk to a brick wall when I try to represent my constituents and say we need a traffic congestion relief plan, and with he don't have it. We have vision zero. The final note I'm going to make, there's a little bit in my view passive aggression here because when you have vehicles mixed up on the roads with automobiles -- when you have automobiles mixed up with bicycles and pedestrians, accidents are a matter of statistical occurrence. I mean, the more bicycles and the more people we have adjacent to motorized vehicles, the greater the likelihood for accidents. So we narrow our crowded roadways and we add bike lanes and then people act surprised that the accidents go up. Well, if you narrow roadways and encourage people to bike next to large motor vehicles, you're going to get more accidents. It's what you've designed for. So you act surprised that accidents are up and you say oh, we need to slow the traffic down. I don't know what else to say. I'm just really frustrated. I'm going to be voting no and I wish you good luck on solving the problems, but there is no energy being put into solving the problem. >> Kitchen: Okay. I think we're ready to vote. [5:17:44 PM] All those in favor of the motion? Yes. >> Gallo: I want to make sure with my support of this that my support of this is really tied to active neighborhood participation in this discussion. I don't want us as a city, I don't want us as a transportation department to come into neighborhoods and implement a program or a pilot program that the neighborhood has not been fully updated and briefed on. So I do want to say very clearly that I think it's a tool that we can use. I think that most neighborhoods will embrace this tool, but I want to make sure that the neighborhoods are a part of the discussion when we start talking about this. >> Kitchen: I would agree. I also think it is very important that wherever the pilot is done for a slow zone pilot has to be done with the neighborhood buy-in and interest. Okay. Are we ready to vote? All those in favor? All opposed? Okay. So that passes three-one. We'll be sending it to council with a recommendation to pass. With that said, I think that we have addressed everything and we'll go ahead and adjourn. Thank you all very much.