Mobility Committee Meeting Transcript – 4/17/2018 Title: City of Austin Description: 24/7 Channel: 6 - COAUS Recorded On: 2/28/2019 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 2/28/2019 Transcript Generated by SnapStream ================================== [1:02:37 PM] >> Kitchen: Okay, everyone, we're going to go ahead and get started. We have a very full agenda. I know that other -- committee members will be joining us. There's one of them. And councilmember Flannigan is on his way. He'll be here in about half an hour or so. So let's go ahead and get started. I'll call the meeting to order at 1:00 P.M. The first item is approval of the minutes of the mobility committee meeting of December 6. >> I move approval. >> Kitchen: Councilmember alter moves approval, councilmember Garza seconds. >> Garza: Sure. >> Kitchen: All in favor. It's unanimous, approval of the minutes. The next item is citizen communication. Do we have -- >> [Off mic] >> Kitchen: For citizen communication? Just -- these are for -- just as a reminder, citizen communication is for items not on our agenda, and then if you want to speak to an item that's on our agenda, we'll take you up with that agenda item. For citizen communication we'll start with Karen. Karen, I'm really sorry I'm gonna mess up your last name so is Karen here? Oops. Not here? We'll try to come back to her. Mike burnet? >> Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Ladiys, missing a few gentleman. I believe the last major initiative that the city executed was a number of safety improvements throughout the community. Most that have funding came [1:04:38 PM] from a $25 million half cents sale left over at cap metro transferred out so when that's gone that's gone. Both of mayor and the chief officer of the authority both agreed or committed to some kind of an engineering update prior to release of the engineering information at the end of first quarter. So I'm just slightly heavy that to make sure that a few of the questions I have -- we get the opportunity to make address some of the questions I have here today. The first of course is as the authority goes forward with project connect and brings lines across lady bird lake and has to circumvent the upac lines I'd like to know what the final economic -- not economic, but edge logic impact is going to be as they try bringing that across. Obviously, I'm a little early because we don't have the specifics and things but that's going to be a primary concern. The next thing is whether or not -- I believe I spoke to this here at city hall before, will the entire street be taken up by directional rapid transit services in conjunction with local transit services? Will shut down a major street. And obviously the trips of that to be -- that are currently being executed on that street when you take four to six lanes out, they're gonna have to transfer somewhere. And that opens to the next question, and that's of course can I get some updated information on the trips coming down the street? You know, some of the trips per hour, especially during prime time on the street? My numbers are pretty far out of date, but what I'm seeing is that the current park and ride capacity -- and that includes the -- we'll speak to the south first, I'll speak to the south, represent less than ten minutes of utilization for that traffic flow on trips per hour. And so I'm trying to get a handle on, you know, where the other 90% or let's say we can get a 20% or 10% impact, where that other 80% of the traffic is gonna go [1:06:38 PM] or 70% of the traffic on the current trips per hour is going to end up going and how we're going to address that. Because, obviously, let's say Barbera Jordan school, where people are picking up their children all the time, if you're going down Lamar with this it will force them over on to victory, which all intents and purposes the folks in there have concerns as to whether or not they'll be able to pick their kids up after school, how they'll handle extracurricular activities, those things will be impacted by this. Again, let's go the other direction. Obviously, one of the things I'm interested in is what is the expected negative economic impact along the rapid route given loss of access to some of the local business establishments if you're going to take up that many lanes for rapid severance into the downtown area. Since it's a rapid service, obviously, that means they're gonna have to have a local service or are you going to eliminate local service along whatever the rapid route is? [ Buzzer sounding ] How are people going to handle that? Is that my time or my -- that's my time? >> Kitchen: Yes. >> Ladies and gentlemen, I apologize, I had more. >> Kitchen: That's all right. There's plenty of other opportunities. >> I'm sure we'll see each other. >> Kitchen: Let me let you know one thing and for others in the community that may be interested, capital metro recently stood up a website that provides -- I think it came up on Friday -- or last week, I forget. Anyway, it's a very detailed information about all the routes so that's public information so people can go on and see that. And then your other questions relate to project connect, so those will be questions that we'll be sure to ask in the future. >> Thank you. As I say, the engineering report, the mayor spoke to, is due at the end of the quarter so I suspect -- that's been announced. That wasn't on the website as yet. So thank you. >> Kitchen: Okay. Thank you. Did Karen join us? Okay. Come on, Karen. Karen, I apologize on your last name. I wasn't sure how to [1:08:40 PM] pronounce it. >> [Off mic] >> Kitchen: Okay. >> [Off mic] >> Kitchen: Okay. >> [Off mic] Is it good now? Okay. Good afternoon, my name is Karen hipsman and I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. I'm here on behalf of the board of directors of [indiscernible] Homeowners association who represents 5600 homes and 20,000 residents of circle C ranch. I'll be speaking about the proposed multiuse pathway that runs through circle C. I handed you a map, highlighted in Orange, showing the proposed area that circle C is concerned about. Some background, in 2016 the citizens of Austin, including many of the residents who live in circle C ranch, voted to approve approximately $650 million in transportation related bond projects. The projects were generalized and not specific and the bonds received public approval. At some point the mobility corridor personnel decided to put in a multipath on both sides of slaughter lane going from fm1826 to already I-35. This would be an one to 12-foot pathway for pedestrians and cyclists. They developed their plan without input from various neighborhood associations, including the circle C homeowners association. When we read the proposed improvements we immediately asked for a meeting to discuss and were repeatedly put off. We finally got them to meet with us. They explained they had gotten input from various [1:10:40 PM] popup meetings at libraries. While slaughter lane is a very long corridor and would greatly benefit from multiuse path, the circle C homeowners association is opposed to this pathway being constructed through the main portion of circle C, especially between Barstow avenue and mopac. Circle C ranch is at the very end of your city and a gateway to beautiful hill country. It's located on the recharge zone of the Edwards aquifer. Over years cchoa has taken their environmental responsibility very seriously in the management of our right-of-ways and open spaces. We have a community model that is a forefront of environmental practices. The slaughter lane corridor through Chris Riley is subject to license agreement with city of Austin for landscaping and irrigation maintenance at the city of Austin right-of-ways. For the entire history of circle C, the circle C hoa maintained this corridor to the highest standards with significant resources applied to maintenance, tree planting, tree care, buffer, landscaping, removal of trash in order to preserve a natural look and feel to the area. This is a mandate of our residents. The mobility corridor proposes to destroy the existing 6-foot sidewalks on either side of slaughter lane and install the multiuse path. This would destroy the significant irrigation main lines that supplies water through the sides and medians in the right-of-way. The circle C hoa would have to rebuild an irrigation system that covers miles of area. The current estimated value of the system. [ Buzzer sounding ] >> Kitchen: If you could wrap up in a few sentences. >> The biggest concern on this corridor mobility problem is the total destruction of slaughter lane that is heavily treed with heritage and -- heritage trees, not all of [1:12:40 PM] them fall within the guidelines of saving the trees. There are some -- the majority of them are 15 to 18 inches, which means the root system could be destroyed. I have a handout for you guys. >> Kitchen: Thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> Alter: Karen, I want to say thank you for coming today. I would love to work closely with you on this issue and my office has gotten some more communications about the asmp we'll talk about later so I really want to invite you to come and meet with me so we can connect on it. >> Definitely. >> Ellis: At the. >> Kitchen: Thank you. We'll move on now to the next agenda item, which is to amend the 2019 mobility committee schedule to include March 11 to allow for a joint meeting of the mobility committee and the housing and planning committee. Do I have a motion to add March 11 for that joint meeting? So councilmember alter moves. Second? Councilmember -- which one? >> Either one. [ Laughter ] >> Kitchen: Okay. All those in favor? Okay. So now we're going to go on to the next item, the draft Austin strategic mobility plan. So we have our presentation for us. >> Madam chair, council, thank you for inviting us. I see the mayor joined us. Thank you very much for this opportunity to present our draft Austin -- Austin traumatic mobility plan. This is really a milestone in our efforts to be more transparent and update our current planning tools so [1:14:41 PM] that we can bring additional tools to the management of mobility here in the Austin region, at the center of the Austin region. My team and I know many citizens have been engaged for over two years on this, and we're very excited about it. Of course there's gonna be questions here at the end with regards to specific projects and so forth. We recognize that. And we look forward to beginning that discussion with council as we move towards adoption of that plan. Any time you do a comprehensive plan there will be elements that raise questions with individual neighborhood associations or business organizations or significant individuals in the community stakeholders, as we call them. But this really is a long-range plan and just because something is in a long-range plan doesn't mean it gets implemented. In other words what I mean by that if there's a new capacity identified in a plan, as you know, we still go through a robust process of a community discussion and evaluation and a no-build decision is always part of the opportunities to make in the future. And so, again, I just want to compliment my staff. They have been hard at work. We've been partnering with cap metro and as you know we'll be having a joint meeting with capital metro board here shortly where we'll be showing you how we've integrated both this project as well as capital metro's project connect as well as future planning going on in this area. You'll be hearing from -- at that future meeting as well an update on the corridor and how the corridor program fits within the asmp as well as project connect. So I know many of y'all have been involved in this on various boards. Thank you for your support thus far. With that I'll turn it over to my assistant director. >> Thanks, rob. I will go through quickly what we have for the agenda, [1:16:43 PM] which is basically an overview to be transparent on the approach we took to the planning process, what we've done with community engagement, and then in detail though still high level, specifics about the strategic mobility plan as it moves into this fourth phase of public basement -- engagement through public hearings. I'll review the top strategies coming out of the planning its relationship to the strategic direction 2023, mobility outcome and then our next steps. This is our time line. As rob pointed out we've been a little over two years starting with mobility talks, which was the precursor to the 2016 bond, where we did a robust community survey and community engagement to figure out, you know, where do we need to head with transportation. So here we are at the very end. That dotted line coming through to March 28, which we will be at full council with the strategic mobility plan. We will be at boards and commissions in the next few weeks, specifically planning commission, urban commission, zoning economics and environmental board. So what are we doing? We have 100,000-foot view of transportation, the transportation element of imagine Austin. Imagine Austin recommended doing a strategic mobility plan to take that vision down to 50,000 feet and develop goals, policies, objectives and action items that can help us realize the vision. These are the adjectives that I'd like to point out that we took to heart during the planning process with regards to accessibility, collaborative, being collaborative with our partners in the community, embracing diversity, being in good -- good environmental stewards and also looking at affordability, among other things. The macro level planning approach included a technical approach, which we did scenario planning where [1:18:44 PM] we continued the imagine Austin scenario planning that resulted in the growth concept maps that adopted in imagine Austin. We continued that scenario planning for the transportation element, and basically our scenarios just measured how well certain macro scenarios did towards the goals in the plan. When we marked out our public engagement strategy, in mobility talks in 2016, when we examined 20 years of planning processes in Austin we realized this was a facet of the community, youth, seniors, people of color, people with mobility impairments were missing voices in the process. So we decided to focus our limited time and resources to really not only doing traditional engagement but focusing in on how we can -- how can we hear the voices of those who need better transportation the most in our community, with the idea when you bring up the whole community, bring up those facets of the community you bring up the whole community. So it is one slide that shows our four phases of public engagement. The first one was prioritizing goals. The second one was feedback on the three scenarios that we had Teed up to look at. The third one was based on the two -- the first two phases, we came up with draft policies, specifically 128 policies as well as priority networks and projects. We did a robust process to get input on those. And now we're going to into phase four, starting today with this public meeting, to get feedback on the draft plan that's been out since last week. We'll be moving towards boards and commissions and we hope the community continues to come out and give feedback about what they see in the plan so we can fine-tune it along with you all as we move towards completion. This is high level prioritization of the goals in the plan by both our traditional engagement and our focused population. Seeing that the top four were the same, except [1:20:45 PM] transposed with our focus population, really wanting us to focus on the affordability of our transportation network. These were the three scenarios, a, B, C. A being more focused on roads with some focused on sustainable modes. To the flip side of C being more focused on sustainable modes and less focus on roads. B being more of a balanced approach. This was the results during phase two. Almost similar with regards to a preference for C, and I think that speaks to that focus population wanting more affordable transportation as well as choices. In phase three, we had a web platform as well as information at libraries, in paper form, to get feedback on the draft policies by chapter. So folks could, you know, zero in on safety if that was their thing. They could zero in on the supply chapter, which is more of what are we building? And/or go to the map and zero in on where do they work, live or play or recreate and see what we have planned. This is a 20-year plan, goes out to 2039 so we have a lot of projects Teed up. In phase three we received over 3,000 pieces of information from the community about 2600 of that were on the projects on the maps. So we got a lot of good feedback. This is a summary for reference. We'll have this presentation on our website after today, of the types of engagement that we did and the way that we tried to do things differently for different results with regards to reaching the community and really going to where people are, doing a lot of focus groups as a way to hear from those focus populations we found was the really good approach. So what did we hear in phase three? Again, 2600 plus, almost 3,000 total, comments over [1:22:46 PM] 50 events. And what you see in the draft ? Plan released last week is directly related to this input. So what's in this plan? Why is it important? What we found in our technical analysis is that if you look at how we get around today during peak hour, which is when we feel our congestion the most, 74% of us are driving alone as opposed to 26% doing something else, walking, teleworking, car pooling, bike, et cetera, taking transit. We started to look at what is forecasted in 2040. More trips reason in the region. What is that -- what does that mode share? Mode share is a really good indicator of how we're doing, a really good measure to see how are we doing towards managing what we know is coming in the future? So we -- what I like about 50/50 is it's where the math came out but it's also fair. It's a realistic and ambitious way to think about 50% of us are still going to need to drive around in cars by ourself perhaps, but it's possible to develop our transit networks, it's possible to develop our bicycle network, pedestrian network, look at hand use in order to reach a 50/50 split which really starts to manage our congestion into the future. What we've Teed up in the plan, we actually have targets for the different sustainable modes. This is our best guess at this time. We anticipate that this will change in five-year updates to the plan. The pieces of the pie, transit right now we're saying let's look at 16%, from 4%. Maybe in 3-5 years that becomes 12% but we have an opportunity with our bike network and maybe that goes to 6%. We'll work with the community and with our boards and commissions and with council to look at those targets through the strategic direction 2023 as well as through updates to [1:24:46 PM] this plan. But this is our best guess at this point as to what's realistic based on funding we have, based on behaviors that we're seeing, and based on the completion of those networks and the policies in place. When you start thinking about telework and flex time, those are policy decisions, not infrastructure decisions that help us towards this goal so all these things have to work together to reach those goals. This is an org chart to the plan. It's quite comprehensive. We started with safety purposely, safety first. This is the two-year update to our vision zero action plan. I'll talk about our strategic recommendations, but as -- when it comes to vision zero we really feel like our next big horizon is really focused on enforcement and education. Our safety projects through the 2016 bond and the way we do design our safety first multimodal approach, so we really feel that being strategic in education and enforcement coupled with what we know already about design is the way to go there. Our next chapter is purposely about demand and really working on the demand in our network. While week tee up where we need to go with infrastructure and we know what to do, it takes time and we are accelerating on those projects from the 2016 bond, but at the same time, the fast fastest and most cost effective way to have more immediate relief as we work on those systems, on that infrastructure, is by managing demand. So we have five chapters related to what are the big levers in managing demand on our network? And then we go into the more traditional chapters that you see in a transportation plan, which is the supply projects and what are we saying about how we supply that infrastructure? Our operations signals. We've done a lot of work in this community on improving the efficiency of our signals over the last few years, and we'll continue to do that and talk about it in [1:26:47 PM] the plan. We talk about externalities related to health in the environment, two really important things to our community and what we heard during publicent. So we dinot skimp there. We have four subchapters there. Then we wanted to really recognize the work that we did with the community around equity, around hearing about affordability as part of -- and the mobility part of the equation with regards to household affordability, accessibility, and public interaction. And then we have a section on implementing our plan. What you'll also find in the plan is indicators and targets that are coordinated with the metrics in the strategic direction 2023, which we are still fine-tuning. You'll see bold policies in all of those subchapters, and most importantly action items that we think are of the most important to move forward with in the next 3-5 years and then every five years we'll update the plan and amend those action items based on how we're doing and how we're moving the needle on that mode share. You'll see priority network maps designated for the roadway network, the public transportation network, as well as the bicycle system. You'll also see a high jury network that relates to our vision zero initiative. You'll see our administrate network table, which is the technical part of the plan. That's an inventory of our streets, their current condition, what their future condition needs to be to realize these priority networks, namely, we coordinated with cap metro, as rob pointed out, and the priority network supports where they're headed in their service planning, as well as with project connect. So hundreds of multimodal projects that we've been receiving feedback on. I'll note that we have over a hundred connections, new road capacity connections to improve the grid, and distribute traffic, managing it into the future. [1:28:47 PM] Our top strategies are tenfold. These are the first five, reducing traffic fatalities and serious injuries. We have associated action items with those in the plan. Moving more people by investing in public transportation. One of the number 1 things as we were out in the community talking to folks over the last two years, we couldn't hear enough about public transportation needs across the city. Managing congestion by managing demand. As I spoke to earlier, completing our active transportation networks. Strategically adding roadway capacity where there's room to do so, where it makes sense to do so from a technical analysis we completed with the plan. We're focused on connecting people to services and opportunity. Again, not just taking the approach of getting folks where they need to go as fast as they can, but understanding that we need to prioritize access to jobs, to health care, to open space, to education being part of our process. Addressing affordability by investing in those more affordable modes, and coordinating more across of course with our housing department, et cetera, really looking at how we can be more efficient in that area. And then right-sizing and managing parking supply, which goes directly to managing demand. That's something we want to be on the forefront with. Looking at emerging mobility options, looking at the area of shared mobility specifically, when we look at technology and being a leader in that area. And then building and expanding on the community relationships that we built during this plan and areas of town it and with communities that historically hadn't been part of our planning process. We are having a call to action to continue those dialogues through plan implementation. New material that I'll see is, again, the street capacity projects, roadway capacity projects, our public transportation priority network, which recall about two years ago council passed a resolution [1:30:47 PM] to ask us to look to create transit priority policy. We said, yes, we want to do it in an integrated fashion to understand how it would affect all the other systems so we Teed that up for y'all in this draft plan. The this is our vision zero focus areas. So the ingredients, what you're going to see in the final plan is basically the street capacity projects, about 300 of them paired with robust recommendations for our sustainable network, and so the final draft we always said that neither one of the scenarios was going to be the plan elements of each of the plans would make up the final plan, and that's what you see. This is not meant for you to read, but this is meant to show the technical nature? [ Laughter ] Y'all are thank god I'm not gonna read that. The street network table is really important because at the end of all these columns and fields is a number about the amount of right-of-way we need to realize the multimodal vision for these streets. And that's important because the land development code allows us to acquire right-of-way through the development process and having this up to date really allows us to know where we need to go and be at the table in a better way to advise when developments come in and acquire what we need to make sure we're not precluding the plans that are Teed up in this plan. Important part. So this is an example of how the plan works. You have a policy. This is a roadway example. Strategically provide new roadway connections and add capacity for vehicles. We have programs within the city, development review programming, regional partnerships, and then you have an example project, where we partnered with the 2016 bond for the bypass at 620 and 2222. We have an indicator, the indicators are directional, and then some indicators we [1:32:49 PM] have more specific targets. About half of them have specific targets. One of the action items is to go back and fill targets in with a little more process after the plan is adopted. If we didn't have one readily available. But at leasts we know the direction we want to go. Then we have a lot of action items, in this case one of them is to increase our collaboration with our transportation by our agencies. This is another one for a transit example. Again, state the policy, identify the different programs across the city that help implement that policy. Sample projects Teed up. This is one recently done. We have future ones identified. We have an indicator on what we'd like to do with this policy, decrease transit public time. Then our action items. So moving forward to completion, these are the dates for future reference, going to zoning and platting, environmental and urban transportation commissions. We are setting a public hearing on March 7 and be holding a public hearing on March 28. With that be happy to answer any questions. Thank you. >> Kitchen: Thank you all very much. This has been a tremendous amount of work over -- I don't remember how many years. And so I really appreciate this. It's a great level of detail for all of us to dig into, to really understand what we need to do for our city. I'm particularly excited about the focus that our community chose, which is essentially that third focus, which really speaks to the desire of the community to really look at a balanced system, where we're looking at sidewalks and transit and bikes in addition to roads. So does anyone have questions? Anyone -- oh, let me ask this first: Do we have some speakers? Let's take our speakers first. And then we'll ask questions. >> Emily Smith, staff liaison. Only one person signed up for this item so far, Mary [1:34:50 PM] Arnold. >> Kitchen: Mary, do you want to come speak to us and then we'll come back to our discussion. >> My name is Mary Arnold. I work with the save muni group and almost I'm a member of the west Austin neighborhood group. I'm on their board of directors so I'm speaking today about a proposal in the draft that y'all are going to be reviewing. This is a road that was not in the draft where everybody could go to the map and comment. So this was slipped in between, I guess, January the 19th or whenever the things were closed. And the time that it was announced last week. This is a road called the red bud trail connector, and it goes from the intersection of lake Austin boulevard and red bud trail diagonally across the golf course and then to infield road at the pecus intersection with infield. And I'm very, very curious as to how this got in and why it was so late getting in, whether it was proposed by someone outside the department. I'm just very unclear. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> Certainly, the west Austin neighborhood group and a whole bunch of other neighborhood groups were not that much involved, as we were not part of the listed focus organizations. [1:36:52 PM] I noticed that dove springs neighborhood association was listed, but no others, including Austin neighborhoods association. So I am signed up as opposed because I don't think this road should be in the plan. >> Kitchen: Okay. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Kitchen: So let's go to questions now. Does anyone have questions that they want to ask? Go ahead councilmember Ellis. >> Ellis: I just had a question. I see so much good work has been done through this process throughout the years and I really appreciate it. I think there's a bit of unclarity, maybe, that's being given to the general public about exactly where we are and when concern projects would start or which ones are going to be kind of approved for survey. So that may just be something that over the years has taken place, but I wanted to make sure there was some opportunity, whether it's now or, you know, before March 28 to provide a little clarity on maybe projects pertaining to my district that people just want a little more information on. >> Sure, councilmember, Robert spillar, director of transportation. Yes, there's still -- this is a draft plan that is coming to council, so of course council can amend the plan as we move forward through adoption process. I would reiterate this is still a high-level plan, and so, you know, especially new roadway connections, the city has not contemplated on a wide scale new roadway connections in decades, and so this is the first time where the city is really stepping into the center of the storm, if you will, and saying, yes, we think we need to add new connections in a variety of places. But I want to reiterate, this is the starting point [1:38:52 PM] of that process, and so even if we have a new design down in circle C, prince or a new roadway connection off southwest parkway or new connector to red bud, that's just a starting point. If we leave those roadways out and in the future we want to have a conversation about them, the first thing we would have to do is first amend the plan so that we could start to have a conversation. And so just because they're in this plan does not by any means mean that they are ready to go to construction or design or planning. It is -- means that, hey, this is a roadway that as painful as it might be we as a community and technical staff need to have an ongoing conversation about. >> I would add to that that one of the programs that we need to tee up upon the adoption of the plan is a prioritization program similar to what y'all are familiar with with the sidewalk plan. There's a very tried and true process for understanding the priority in sidewalks. We would do the same for the new connections. So nothing in the plan is imminent in going forward. There will still be a robust process and we still need to create a prioritization process similar to the sidewalk program for those new connections. To your point, we should create a flow chart of what happens once a project is in a plan and how does it develop, and we'd be happy to do that and provide that prior -- moving to the 28th, which I think you're asking for, which I think is a good idea. >> Ellis: Fantastic, I'd really like that and I'd offer to be closely involved with you in discussions in my district so we can make sure we're all on the same wavelength. >> Thank you. >> Ellis: Thanks. >> Kitchen: Councilmember alter. >> Alter: Thank you. I just wanted, Mr. Spillar addressed it a little bit but I'm wondering if we can address Ms. Arnold's concern for that specific -- I think it's really important that we're understanding what these lines on the map -- [1:40:53 PM] >> Sure. >> Alter: -- Mean and how that one got placed in this draft without feedback demanding it? >> Sure. Councilmember, again, Robert spillar, I'll speak to that. We've been talking a lot about Wednesday Austin, about how best to reduce traffic or address traffic, and in that discussion a concept of a additional grid connection in that area -- I don't know what the alignment would be or how it would connect, but clearly we have sort of a big part of the network that kind of goes into a circuitous cul-de- sac on that end of town. So whether we just missed it, being able to communicate to the public that we thought that something needed to be in that way, I apologize for that, but from a technical perspective, we have no way to prove lake Austin boulevard without some additional grid connections in there. So, again, I would just reiterate, it is a concept for discussion. It came from within the department as a way to create a more smooth connection to actually infield so that that traffics that headed through west Austin, whether it be headed to Westlake and to south Austin or to the north through mopac could have a way other than going right by Austin high school and the lake Austin boulevard. Again, council, should you choose to amend that out of the plan, as we move forward, which is certainly your right to do it, it would be hard to have a conversation about a connection without then first going back and amending the regional plan or citywide plan, the Austin strategic mobility plan so we could have a conversation. I put forward as new developments come to areas, one reason that we have included new connections, if they're even in the possibility, is so that that can help generate the opportunity for a discussion [1:42:56 PM] about future development impact fees and participation. As you know, many parts of the community that are well built up, we may not have projects, capital projects identified that can generate participation in the future on development impact fees. And so this clearly was an opportunity to make sure that if new development comes to this area -- and I'm not talking about any particular one. If, you know, [indiscernible] Decides to redevelopment or something like that, I don't know what might happen in that area, that we have an opportunity to have a discussion about infrastructure support. So we're at the beginning of the process, not at the end or in the middle. >> Alter: Thank you. Related to this, I see that a lot of commissions where you're going to be going over the next month and folks can go and speak there and share their concerns at those commissions. I'm wondering if you could speak a little bit to how you're going to prepare feedback from those commissions for council on the 28th and whether the 28th we're expecting to do first reading only or -- which was my original understanding but it's not as clear from this presentation. So if you could clarify the feedback points from now forward, now that we have the final staff recommendation but we're still going to these boards and commissions. >> That's a really good question, and it's one we've started to think about as we did some one-on-one briefings with all of you over the last month. That came up at various times, and we are -- I can't answer directly but we will definitely provide y'all the recommendations from the boards and commissions. Specifically, I can't predict how that you remember going to original -- organize their recommendation. I envision there being a pure staff recommendation and then we will outline for you -- the planning commission is the one commission that's required, [1:44:57 PM] because it's an amendment to imagine Austin, utc is also required, so we'll be sure and provide those as clear as possible. And then we'll provide the environmental board and others as well. So if you have any recommendations for us on how we might do that, we're open to it. Mayor pro tem Garza gave us some input at her briefing on how that might be organized, but it's a lot of information. It's similar to when you have any other type of big amendment to tee it up. So as far as how y'all want to take first reading, if you want to just do a public hearing you could do that. It's really at your discretion. You could just open the public hearing and not have the first reading. It's however y'all want to take it, and we'll have a dialogue back and forth on what y'all think is best. We can discuss it. >> Kitchen: Let's see. Councilmember Flannigan and then councilmember pool. >> Thank you. I'm sorry for my lateness. I was on I-35. [ Laughter ] Any better way to be late from a mobility committee meeting is coming back from San Marcos from a conference. I listened to the whole conversation. Most of my question is about amendments process. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> And not big ones, but it's when I look at parts of my district, I see road connections that the staff and I kind of have a agree to disagree moment on. So the question for me is more so at a council level, what will be our process? Not for me to bring those now, because I want to make sure every one of our colleagues has the same amount of opportunity to talk about things they'd like to see different, but it's a process question, I'm not sure how we want to manage that. Because it can get out of control very quickly. So I don't know if that's going to be proposed for us to deliberate at some point. >> Kitchen: Well, I would think that -- I'd ask the mayor if I'd like to weigh in. I would think we could bring up that at work session like we would any other item and [1:46:57 PM] let people know what our amendments may be. And then if we find that there are a lot of them, we could work on some process for doing that. >> Flannigan: All right. >> Kitchen: But I think that there -- I would expect that there would be some amendments. I'm hearing from some other councilmembers also that they may have amendments. Does that answer your question for now? Okay. Councilmember pool? Did you want to add anything, councilmember pool? >> Pool: Thanks. Thanks for the invitation to come today. I know this -- I'm gonna -- I'm gonna speak just for my district, but I think it's probably shared across the entire city. Top concern for district 7 residents and all parts of which really supported the mobility bonds by overwhelming majorities both times, in '16 and '18, is sidewalks. And, you know, I was strategic in identifying areas of district 7 for the quarter cent monies and those projects are going along really well. There's one neighborhood that sort of missed out on the quarter cent process because of a P.U.D. That was put in after the quarter cent monies were allocated. And those are an area of -- called shoalmont. I think that's the designation formally on the property descriptions but it's also south Al-- allandale, in that part of the city, and they are super focused on trying to connect their neighborhoods so the students can get over to Hyde park elementary. And we have some pretty big gaps, and I'd like to ask if we -- looking through the asmp if there is any focus on filling the gaps that are in our inner city neighborhoods, specifically, to round out our safe routes to schools areas that may have been missed on some of the previous targeted opportunities for funding, but which, because of the [1:48:58 PM] increased attention to sidewalks and safe routes for kids and pedestrians and bicycles, if we are looking to fill those gaps beyond what each of us individually may be designating for our districts. >> Excuse me. We -- are -- aren't recommending with the asmp to -- >> Pool: Did you say you are or are not? >> We are not, are not. So we have to look and see -- go back and look and see, go back to our office on what policies we've Teed up that might speak to what you're speaking about, you know, how are we doing in our implementation of our local mobility portion of the bond, 137 million, what's Teed up, what is their process, and if there's any gaps in between that, the process for the prioritization for safe routes to school on the bond as well as the sidewalk master plan to see if there's an action item or something that speaks to what you're speaking of, and we can get back to your office on that so that if you'd like to focus on that as you look at the samples asmp, that you're able to do that. >> Pool: That's great. I know focus from my office and also from councilmember alter's on students getting to bryker woods elementary was pretty successful that's below 45th street so this is the area north and the students who are going over to highland park on the other side of mopac. They ride their bikes across the Hancock street bridge and there's a really good bike lane there, but getting the kids on foot and on bikes from their homes in those south allandale, Findlay, generally Findlay area neighborhoods across are problematic. >> Councilmember, if I could, you know, the asmp does have policies related to safe routes to school and vision zero and certainly we want all our streets to be pedestrian friendly and, you [1:50:58 PM] know, that means different types of pedestrian facilities, depending on the type of street you're on. >> Pool: Right. >> And so it's not in conflict. I think instead of being at the 50,000 level you're a little bit lower in terms of what your question is, but we'll get back to you and try to figure out a way -- >> Pool: I recognize I was getting a little deeper and closer down into the weeds but I wanted to take this really great opportunity to surface that concern because it has been bubbling up. Then the second question that I had, I just wanted to make sure that Mary Arnold's question was answered, and I think we went a long way down that road to answer how that happened with the red bud connector but I think the one thing that might be lingering out there is the fact that nobody in the public knew about it so the public comment period was closed. And so is there anything that we can do to allow that comment to happen on the parts that may have been inserted since the time the public comment was closed and the plan was updated? >> Well, of course, you know, one of the steps, councilmember, is to have the public hearing and have the public input at the different commission meetings and so forth. And so although we asked to take a pause in the public comment so we could actually, you know, develop the draft, there's a whole new round of public availability for comment coming forward. So -- >> That's great. >> Absolutely. >> Pool: I think that folks may worry that things have concretized as far as decision-making so I just want to encourage the community to come out and come to the public hearing, but also to encourage us and our professional staff to continue to remain open to adjustments and changes that the community may not have known they needed to voice prior to the public hearing. >> And just to be transparent, you know, we know that there are other facilities that are included in the plan where we may have received public comment that may be negative or may be positive or whatever, [1:52:59 PM] but, again, the plan that we've turned in represents what we think of as a really strong technical recommendation. We know that council now needs to make some policy decisions about what stays in the long-range plan or what needs to come back through a separate amendment process in the future because a plan is not static and so we'll have an amendment process so that when a new transportation facility that we may not have thought of at this point needs to be contemplated that we can amend the plan and add it back in. And so, again, this is just a big vision plan to start the conversation about individual projects. >> Pool: Thank you. >> Yeah. I will add to that. Coal kitten, division manager, nat. The plan itself, you can think of as, like, a snapshot in time. We have to include our best technical recommendation at this time in order to make sure that we can have those negotiations in the future. If we don't include certain roadways or improvements in the plan right now we might miss out on that opportunity should something business plan -- happen before it's amended into the plan clearly the situation at muni is very premature but it is included in there just in case something should happen, we know that we'll have an opportunity to be at the table to negotiate the built form. >> Pool: That sounds great. And I'd like to engage in additional conversations about that and maybe in partnership with my colleague, councilmember alter. >> Kitchen: Okay. I have a question. Do you -- councilmember Ellis, you had a question. Go ahead and I'll ask mine. >> Ellis: I have a quick request. I just wanted to ask for -- maybe this comes up at the work session when red bud is on our next agenda, but I [1:55:01 PM] want to know more about the dialogue about who utilizes the bridge and kind of some traffic analysis that's going on. It happens to be just in a very precarious spot that is neighboring cities that are out of our jurisdiction and I wasn't sure if there was more conversation leading up to this point about making upgrades to that bridge and kind of who all the stakeholders were involved because it does serve our community and other communities. So I just wanted to request that. >> Councilmember, as you know, there's a more detailed study going on with regards to the bridge itself ask and design and I would expect that project has some of that information. I think from the 50,000 planning level we know two points. The south and north end of the bridge and mopac. We know that there's lots of traffic traveling between those sort of two destinations, and so I don't know if we have detailed modeling data from this project, but I will certainly pass that on to the other project. >> Ellis: I would appreciate that. Thank you. >> If I may, we have a date in my office and we'll get to to you. It's 75% austinites I believe is the number. >> Ellis: Great, thank you. >> Kitchen: Councilmember Garza. >> Garza: Is this thing on? I just -- I think staff did a good job of kind of zooming back out of -- I think it's natural to want to get into the weeds of very specific roads, but, you know, the way I've explained this and for anyone watching this is like -- this is the road version of imagine Austin. So it's not -- you know, it's a vision. You know, there are things in imagine Austin, including some activity centers, for example, that are not activity centers right now. And, you know, at the -- also, if there's a road in there now, there may not be funding for it. We may not be able to get funding for it in 20 years. And then vice versa. If it's not in there now, it doesn't mean something mig happen where some big -- [1:57:02 PM] something happens and now there's a -- there's the opportunity for funding. And so I just want to -- I think staff did a good job of pulling us back from the very specific things. But, generally speaking, I also wanted to add my thanks to staff. I know that you've worked very hard on this. And I also want to thank the community. I was -- it was very -- it was awesome to see the input, and it was great to see that our -- I think Austin understands for the most part that we're growing and we have to have a mode shift and we cannot be sustainable and we cannot fix our congestion issues just being single vehicle -- single occupancy vehicles. Seeing that pie chart and 74% of austinites are using their vehicles to get -- and I know there's reasons for that. We're working on making our transit more efficient. We're seeing great numbers at cap metro and ridership increasing, which is what -- cap metro is one of the agencies, one of the few agencies in the country that our hiredship is increasing, we're doing things, making those changes. So I am really excited about the community feels like coming on board as we make this mode shift to be more sustainable, especially as we see funding difficulties in finding funding and even know, you know, threats from our legislature, frankly, about funding, how we can bring in funding. So just make sure I made all my comments there. Yeah. So I'm excited about this. There's plenty of time to comment still. I was going to say you could bring up that slide that shows all the opportunities of -- before the boards and commissions, before the planning commission. There's plenty of time. Contact your councilmembers. So thank you to staff. >> I'll add to that. Every email that we receive [1:59:04 PM] we will compile and turn over to council for consideration. >> Kitchen: Thank you. Thank you. Well said, councilmember Garza. I have a question that I'd like to ask Chris yannis to join us at the table. I have a question, if you want to go back to slide 24. I want to just understand -- yes, that one. So we all understand that, as you all have mentioned that we're -- that you've worked very closely with the transit authority. Particularly with regard to project connect and also with regard to other transit improvements. One of the things that we've been talking about is this roadway table, and how we reflect the potential for needed right-of-way in the future. With regard to, you know -- with project connect, we have some immediate projects that we'll be talking about, but we've also talked at previous mobility committee meetings about aspirational, you know, issues for the future. And as this is a -- as councilmember Garza said, this is a plan for the future. We want to be sure and reflect in the roadway table sufficient right-of-way if we potentially have for some of these roads in the future have the potential to do something in addition border to rapid transit. So we've had -- we haven't had much discussion from the development side. So I understand the street network table is one of the many tools that our development services department uses, and so I really appreciate you being with us today, Chris. I just wanted you to give us a basic overview. I'm not asking for anything lengthy or anything definitive, but just tell us how you used this street [2:01:05 PM] network table with regard to the -- particularly with regard to the right-of-way columns. First I'm making an assumption that it is a useful tool for you in development services. So could you speak to that just for a few minutes? >> Certainly. Councilmembers, Chris yannis, development services department. As you mentioned, the roadway table is a means by which development services staff as they review development applications to determine a roadway's classification and then determine the right-of-way that will be required in order to approve that application. There are -- there are opportunities after that number has been established to go through an exercise by which we will determine rough proportionality. But essentially the roadway table is how we start the discussion and say we need so much right-of-way for this particular project. >> Kitchen: Okay. And do either of you all want to add anything? >> Yeah, I would add that in addition to the right-of-way table, the other field that's really important is the roadway description, which is the future roadway description. So it's also a way that we can start to talk about mitigation projects with the development. So the right-of-way is one form of mitigation, but then there's signal work and there's bicycle facilities, there's sidewalk above and beyond what's required just adjacent to their property that might come out of a transportation impact analysis or any other type of review of the project. So the descriptions are also a really important part and to understand if it's on a priority network, is the project on a transit priority network and should we be asking for mitigation with regards to transit priority treatments other than right-of-way needed for dedicated pathways, for [2:03:05 PM] example. So that was my addition. Then I wanted to ask Cole if he wanted to add because he's indepth in the development process. >> Well, I'll just add that we've been operating under roadway table that was adopted in 2000 and last amend amended in 2004. So working with development services on each of these new developments that have occurred along these arterials. We've had to take them on a case- by-case basis knowing that those right-of-ways that had been identified were -- were out of date. So we would have to figure out what exactly do we need along these roadways. And we always knew that the asmp would be that process to bring those right-of-way requirements up to date. >> Councilmember, madame chair, I think we've also been talking about as we -- in some of those corridors, for instance, where we may be trying to reserve right-of-way for future transit improvements or stuff, working with development to be creative in how we may think abouting Justine henin say extra right-of-way that we request in multiple ways until we use it for its ultimate use. Can we use it for drainage structures, rain gardens or so forth knowing we may have to replace that in the future when we go to make a mobility investment. Or think more creatively about how we might supply, for instance, public parking along those frontage roads or frontagees of those roadways so that we retain control of some of those assets that we can change into future assets knowing that we still want an urban forum that meets our [2:05:06 PM] affordability goals and urban goals in the meantime. >> Kitchen: Okay. Thank you very much. I think this is really important because this is a plan for our future. And if we're -- you know, if we weren't looking to the future in terms of preserving our options for the kind of transit network that we need to build out over the, you know, next many years, then we could find ourselves in a position where it was too late. So I'm really very pleased with the timing of the asmp and the rate the street network table and the other kinds of options that you mention work together with our development services so that we have the best chance that we can in terms of thinking through how we can develop a transit network that we need as we grow. Were you going to say something? >> Flannigan: I was going to add to that if I could. I want us to be really careful about how we balance all the concerns and desires of the city. You kind of touched on it, Mr. Spillar, but, you know, to -- we have some ordinances that say you want the buildings close to the street and the parking in the back, and then to say well, maybe we should put the parking in the front so it makes it easy to adjust the right-of-way in the future. Obviously we can't do both at the same time. But I think being sensitive to how we reserve right-of-way appropriately so we're not losing the opportunity for more housing in the city. >> Kitchen: Yeah and -- I was going to say yes, that's an important balance because the corridors along which we are identifying for the need for transit are the same corridors that we need housing. So we have to -- so at this point preserving flexibility to look at what's needed in a particular area I think will be important. >> Flannigan:en I think some of the frustration some of us had with the last attempt to write code was [2:07:08 PM] individual departments maximizing their flexibility and by the time every department maximizes their flexibility, you can't build anything because you've got to have all the buffers. That's going to be an interesting conversation this year. >> Kitchen: That's one reason we've set March 11th meeting so we can talk about transportation and housing together. >> I was going to say yes, councilmember, and the real ah-ha is maybe we need to think of these corridors as changing over time and maybe there's an interim use of that right-of-way that doesn't neglectly impact -- parking is an example. When we add the transit capacity so we reduce our need for that parking, then we can convert stuff over. Thinking of this more as a dynamic corridor as opposed to to a once in a time -- >> Flannigan: Or even questions of scale where if you are building at a certain scale and it's not pre cruding additional scale. So that's an interesting concept. >> It's not one engineers are used to thinking of is transitioning in time. >> Kitchen: We're going to need to move along. >> We have one more speaker who signed up to speak. >> Kitchen: We can take the speaker and then you two -- okay. So that was Katie and then we have two more questions and then we'll wrap it up. So ... Okay, while she's getting set up, did you have something quick, councilmember alter? >> Alter: It's not that quick. >> Kitchen: Go ahead. >> Katie cam, long-time resident of Austin, urban planner and transportation [2:09:09 PM] engineer. And I'm here today because, first I want to commend staff, we definitely needed a comprehensive transportation plan. I love to see the cycling and the walking and the transit and all the ambitious goals laid out in the plan. I'm here to raise awareness about another mode that is not explicitly included in the plan and I would love to see it included in the plan. There's several cities throughout the U.S. That are explicitly including neighborhood electric vehicles into their transportation plans. There's examples. If you can go back to the first slide. We have a wide range of two-seaters, six- seaters, also where someone in a wheelchair can roll up and their wheelchair is the driver's seat for these vehicles. That's a photo of my garage. And the great thing about -- oh, great. The great thing about having a neighborhood electric vehicle is sometimes that's the mode that makes more sense to go to Home Depot or something rather than take a car that's meant for highway. If I don't need to get on the highway, why am I taking a highway car? That's the nice thing about these. I've been talking to people about nevs and one of the things that starts coming up, I don't want to ride my bike in 100-degree weather but I would definitely take my Nev. I just came back from a visit to Lincoln, California where they create lanes for nevs or bikes. It's a great way to get people out of their car without having to go to transit if it doesn't work for them. That's a photo of my daughter driving the Nev around Mueller. They are really easy to drive. The elderly love to drive them because it's real easy to get in and out. It's a great way to get around town. There's a high school in peach tree city, Georgia, mostly golf carts there, but a portion of the parking lot is dedicated for smaller [2:11:09 PM] vehicles for the students to drive there. They are incredibly cheap. We're very concerned about affordability in this city. I got mine for $6,500 off e-bay, pay less than $200 a year in full coverage insurance and all I do is plug it into a 110-volt in my garage. If we talk about expanding transportation options, especially affordable ones, nevs is where it's at. There's examples of cities that are striping their roadways to include Nev lanes. Maximize efficiency. Just like we have concerns about cyclists being protect by cars, it would be the same for nevs. Long term having protected lanes. They are very efficient in size so when we talk about parking, I'm a civil engineer, there's a lot of land for parking. They take up a fraction of the space. And peach tree city, Georgia they are actually signing infrastructure. [Buzzer sounding] >> Kitchen: If you could wrap up. >> That's it. >> Kitchen: Perhaps if you could leave us a copy of your presentation, that would be great. >> Yes. >> Kitchen: Thank you very much. Councilmember alter and then councilmember pool and then we really do need to wrap up because we're running over. >> Alter: Thank you. I also wanted to thank staff for the work that went into this. I think, you know, as a sum total, it has lots of really important elements that provide policy guidance for us to get to a mode shift and govern how we're going to be making decisions I think it was the eight goals underneath that. I wanted to ask a little about how in this version one of the strategies was exemplified in the implementation actions and that's prosecutorly the build and expand relationships. We as a council had an opportunity on a regular basis to talk with cap metro about project connect and how that fits in, but there's a lot of other [2:13:11 PM] governmental entities that interface with asmp. I've been talking a lot with Lincoln Cole about the schools and some of the low-hanging fruit that are opportunities to address mobility challenges when we look at schools. There are parts of town it's largely county and state roads and I'd like to better understand how we're building in enhancing those partnerships and those relationships to address our mobility concerns collectively in this draft of the asmp. >> I'll start and then hand it over to Cole. You are absolutely right and I appreciate your input early in the process about those collaborations, especially with the school districts, not only aisd but the multiple other school districts that we have in Austin. And we've Teed up those recommendations to continue the conversation. So we've had some initial conversation, so the action items that you see in the plan draft, things like collaborating with school districts on school siting criteria. A lot of 311 calls we get are about traffic concerns around schools. Not only aid but all the other districts. So if we can be at the table in a more proactive way on school siting criteria, that's one of the action items as well as looking at everybody knows when school is out, congestion is a little lighter. So how can we work with the school districts to maximize the number of students who are taking buses that are eligible for buses. So with aid in particular, we talked with a lot of the other districts, but the big number was 37,000 students at aid who are eligible for the bus, only about 21,000 do take the bus. So it's an opportunity for demand management. So you'll see those kind of action items that are very specific with the school trip. So I hope that gives you a little more detail of what is in the plan with regards [2:15:11 PM] to the collaboration with the school districts. But, of course, with txdot, with Travis county, we've been working with them, Cole can maybe speak to that as to how we coordinated with them on their transportation plan that is also in the works. >> Yeah. I was going to say with asmp, it was certainly a good opportunity to strengthen those relationships. Travis county having done their first transportation plan as well, usually they rely on the campo planning process, so the first one for them to do for their jurisdiction. We took this opportunity to coordinate those roadways that go in and out of our city limits and into our extraterritorial jurisdiction that need that coordination. So beyond the entities that we collaborated with, it's also very community facing. So throughout this process we then strengthening our relationships with the community that we might not have talked to before. So moving forward we certainly want to continue those relationships that we've built. So it's not just those agencies, entities, it's the community that I think we've really touched along the way. >> And if I may, in terms of collaboration with all three of our counties, Williamson, hays and Travis county as well as surrounding jurisdictions, I often get the comment of, well, we can't figure out what the city wants. So what's important is this plan states what our policy is, and you all adopted it, states why we act the way we do in terms of the the recommendations we make with regards to transportation projects that cross our jurisdictions and so forth. So I think being clear and articulating what motivates us in terms of mobility is really important as an organization to collaboration because then we can meet on the same page and have discussions about how best to design that roadway or that pedestrian [2:17:12 PM] crossing or whatever the case might be. >> Kitchen: We're running about 15 minutes over. Do you have a short question for us? >> Pool: It was just more to emphasize the points that you had made and also that councilmember Flannigan had made. This goes to or established corridors where -- this council hasn't approved them, they are done and fully built and specifically those are -- there are plenty examples on burnet road, and it is impeding our ability to then take that real estate that's the street to make way -- because it's also a major transit corridor for the buses. And I really want to know how we are going to thread that needle because it affects that really important transit corridor that happens to be the spine of district 7. So I just wanted to thank you for bringing that up about the flexibility and to the extent that you are having conversations about that, I'd like to be included so we can help make that reality happen properly on burnet road especially. >> Right, and so councilmember -- >> Kitchen: That's going to be a much longer conversation. >> Look forward the the work session. >> Kitchen: Let's move on -- let's move on. Mayor? >> [Inaudible] >> Kitchen: You are just going to make my life hard. Thanks a lot. Payback, right. >> Flannigan: There are some school districts that wish they could add more school bus service, but had challenges hiring bus drivers, Round Rock specifically forces kids to walk and their parents are driving them. So it's not even just that not everybody is getting on the bus, some kids would if the bus was available. >> Kitchen: Okay. Thank you all. This has been a very good conversation. And thank you for coming. Excellent presentation. As we've all said, we recognize it's been a great deal of work and we really [2:19:13 PM] appreciate it. We're now going to move on to our next agenda item which relates to the dockless mobility program. So just to give everybody a time check, do we have -- we're running 15 minutes over. We had allocated about 45 minutes and we have urban trails after that which is 15 to 20 minutes. Does anybody have a hard stop at 3:00? Let's try to keep this to 45 minutes and we should be able to finish by 3:15. >> Today we're here to present sort of where we are with regards to the dockless mobility. As you know, we've been a years-long pilot of these new technologies as we had promised and now we are ready to start talking about some modified legislation through council to decide how we move forward, for lack of a better reason. My assistant director, Jason, would have been here. He had a death in his family and so I have another Jason for you here. But he and I will try to meet your needs today as quickly as possible. >> Good afternoon, councilmembers. Jason Redfern, parking enterprise. Here today to talk about where we are with the dockless -- dockless in Austin. And so currently we have ten authorized vendors to operate within city of Austin right-of-way. Really seven of them have deployed their services with three that have not deployed yet. We have a total of 17,650 units servicing an 85-jerry mile area. As you can see, about 15,300 are the most popular vehicle that's offered for service. [2:21:13 PM] What we're seeing in ridership, and so the month of December we had a little over 300,000 miles ridden with -- slightly under 9400 individual units identified on the roadway. In January we had about a 10% reduction in miles ridden to about 271,000 miles, with Almos 8,000 devices on the roadway. >> And so to put that in perspective, remember we started operating dockless mobility since last April. If you do the math, this has been pretty consistent since it's grown to about the 200, almost 300,000 rides per month so we are well up over two, two and a half million trips since last April. >> So just as a reminder, that we don't count every trip that is reported to us. We try to sort out some of the anomalous trips. Anything under a tenth of a I will moo, anything over 500 miles because that unit could be moving to Dallas for all we know. And so this doesn't show all of the -- what's reported, but we just try to sort out those anomalies if possible. Here's the scooter usage map showing -- this is our high -- high use areas. You can see downtown Austin, of course, is extremely popular. Congress avenue corridor has a lot of usage. But the U.T. Area has a built-in usership as well. The students are enjoying this service and we have a lot of high use in the university area as well. >> And on this map, just for clarification, the white areas also have scooter trips going on, they just didn't reach the lowest criteria to show up as one of the colors. We know, in fact I just had a call from someone off the bee cave corridor saying hey, there's somebody with a scooter out here. We know there's scooters other places in town, but regards to the map, this is [2:23:15 PM] the most desired areas. >> So we have some safety data here. This is data that was provided from the -- from the txdot data base. So we would like to recognize that there was a fatality that occurred February 1st on the I-35 service road. We don't have all of the information or it's still under investigation, and that issue was outside the date range of what we ran the data on just for a complete snapshot of data. So from December 1, 2018, till January 31 is the information we're presenting. That fatality will show up in our future presentation that we give. So on the left on the chart you can see that we had 71 injuries that were scooter related. In the chart on the right, you can tell that most of them were nonlife-threatening. Many of the issues were classified as likely but unverifiable. And this injury data was analyzed by the Austin public health department. The CDC study, so the CDC is investigating reported dockless injuries, and they are reporting and findings will help us form regulations and make improvements to the mobility and the service that's being offered. There's about a three-month evaluation period. They are evaluating the date range of September 5 through November 30 of those reported scooters incidents. And they are doing environmental factor interviews with the people that are contacting them back. They are asking them what time of day was it, what day DI it happen, what were the other environmental factors, was there some sort of a weather event, was there an imperfection in the roadway, was there potholes. Those are the type of [2:25:17 PM] questions they are asking the people participating. They identified about 271 participants that could have been injured in a scooter incident. They've received about 130 responses back. Of course, these are preliminary numbers. So the report is not finalized and we're being very cautious about putting the information in the presentation because that information could change. And the report is -- the final report is looking like at the end of March or beginning of April should be ready for us to disclose to everyone. >> Just to hone in on that report, it's interesting because they are taking sort of an epidemiology approach, we'll better understand what the causes of these incidents are. The fatality that we mentioned earlier, as unfortunate as it was, there was also a car involved in that crash. For me to say it was because of the scooter or because of the car, I don't know yet, but hopefully the study will help us better understand incidents in total what is causing the injuries. And how significant they are. >> So we're going to -- March 28 we're looking to bring forward four components of regulation to improve dockless service in Austin. We're going to be bringing forward -- we're going to look at chapter 12-2 and define or better define micro mobility devices and some enforcement actions that we can take. We want to improve the service by going to possibly a franchise model. We are also looking at strengthening our ability to prevent disruption. Under the right-of-way ordinance. And then we're also going to bring towards -- forward a fee amendment to change the fee structure for dockless services. So changing definitions in 12-2, we're going to include [2:27:19 PM] micro mobility into the regulatory landscape. We've worked with the Austin police department to identify some actions that are -- and language that are enforceable. We're using the term reasonable and prudent, and so we can't set speed limits on sidewalks, but if -- it's a pedestrian-rich environment and say a rider is barreling down the sidewalk through a bunch of pedestrians, that would be considered not using reasonable and prudent judgment. And then that would give the Austin police department the ability to cite for that type of behavior. We're also going to revert to state mandated rules of the roadway. So if you are on the road, using the roadway, you should be stopping at all stop signs, you should be signaling, so there will be revisions to that. Then we're going to be creating special mobility Zones in certain environments. These are going to be context sensitive situations where the city's traffic engineer will consider several factors and implement measures that provide the most safety and mobility. >> Can I expand on that? First of all, those new regulations would not just apply to scooters, they would be also applied to cycle users, bicycles or skateboards or any other wheeled device, if you will, that interacts with the roadway or potentially the sidewalk. I believe this would modernize and simplify the code. We know that many times users of those devices here in Austin are in fact visitors to Austin so they may not know the specifics of the code. Going to a rules of the road kind of approach gives us the ability to expect similar behavior from all users whether they are a visitor or not a visitor. Yeah, go ahead. >> And so I've got some [2:29:21 PM] examples of different situations where we would look at the environment. Second street is a two-lane roadway. It's one lane each direction, kind of low speed, but there are high pedestrian centers and businesses in the area and so those would be factors that would be considered when we're looking at slow down or dismount Zones. Third street is a facility with dedicated accessibility for scooters and so that would be a sidewalk that we could potentially carve out more area just for P edestrians. And then congress avenue is a six-lane roadway. It's got high use on the sidewalk area and so we would, you know, want to take a look at and potentially we could create slow-down Zones or some sort of passing zone versus making someone in a scooter use the roadway in that type of traffic. And then here's a sample of the type of legends that we could use on the sidewalk to create slow-down or dismount Zones. These would be affix understand the right-of-way so when people are driving in those areas with those special uses, they will know what that special use pertains to. We're looking at improving services and going -- and going to a franchise model. So we believe that a franchise model could -- would definitely limit the market, provide a greater market share for the vendors who are selected. It assures that vendors will have greater usership, they will have a larger portion of the market. We think that it will even sent I haveize the vendors to invest more in the city of Austin -- incentivize -- and provide greater customer service under this model. And we're looking at our criteria being the six anchors from the sb23 plan. [2:31:21 PM] We'll have an application submitted to us, we'll submit that to council for consideration and then council will be asked to approve each of those franchise operators. We want to be able to strengthen our ability to innovate or actually prevent disruption as well. We were disrupted in April and didn't have a regulatory framework in place that -- that allowed us to move very quickly. And so by broadening the terms a bit, removing the term dockless and going to micro mobility and expanding that definition, we think that will give us some additional ability to regulate when something disruptive happens, but if something innovative also happens in the micro mobility realm, we want to be able to provide that service and have a recourse or a process that we can follow to on board something like that. And then safety and connectivity. So we're looking at modifying the fee ordinance for dockless services. Currently it's $30 a device every six months. We're -- what we want to do is we want to capture all programmatic costs. We want to cover all costs for applications, inspections, monitoring fleets, responding to citizen service requests. But finally we also want to make investments in capital infrastructure as well with these fees, and it could be an antenna system that is -- has better gps locating services downtown. It could be constructing sidewalks. It could be adding protected bike lanes or painting or striping new bike lanes. We want these fees to go back to enhance the services of the dockless companies, and so we'll be bringing forward a fee proposal on [2:33:22 PM] March 28th. Community engagement. So just real quickly touch on the trail pilot. I just received just very minimal information. They are still in the information gathering stage. They received over 1,000 responses to the survey so far. The general tone is -- seems to be a neutral stance to the use of trails so far. But we're going to be doing some speed monitoring in conjunction with the rangers as well. We're continuing to go out to community -- to the neighborhoods and meet and explain dockless opportunities. Let's see here. And then here's our 311 service request. So in June we used an existing csr or service request to record dockless issues. We created a specific dockless csr type or service request. And so at the same time we increased fleet size as well. So you'll see a climb from August to approximately November. That's with the addition of those units and that dockless csr type that we created. >> I would just want to point out the obvious hopefully as well. These are not negative csrs. They may be questions on how to use the system. We don't have the data to say what was positive, negative out of these. It's just the volume has increased as both the fleet and the use and interest has increased. >> Sxsw preparation. We spent months planning for the event, the dockless providers have been very engaged with us. [2:35:23 PM] We've been -- we've identified some logistical issues -- I'm sorry, some logistical solutions for staging these devices in the dockless companies. We're going to be on the periphery of the closure area for sxsw. So the entire event closure for sixth street and red river and Rainey street will be classified as no ride zone so we will not allow anyone to ride anything through those Zones. If somebody has a bike or a skateboard, they can walk that through the closure areas. If they have a dockless vehicle, they are to leave that, they are not going to be able to take that device into the closure area. >> And on this, you know, when we look back at the special events over the last year, the pilot, we've really learned a lot about how to service with scooters and dockless bicycles points events. So think about Austin city limits and some of the other big events in the park. This is a totally different type of event because it's not a point destination, it's a diffuse event. So we've done our best planning. We will certainly debrief after this event to see how we do. I will tell you that all the other cities around the country that are experiencing dockless are calling us for our experiences with these big events. So everybody is learning, so we believe we've got a good plan for it is I guess what I'm saying. >> Thank you. Street design update, parking infrastructure. So we've installed some dockless boxes around the city. This is at fifth and pleasant valley. It's outside the cap metro headquarters. And we're going to be concentrating on the south congress corridor, southbound and northbound at [2:37:23 PM] metro rapid stations. We think that providing an ordererly environment around cap metro bus stops is going to be important. We know that people are taking dockless to transit and then taking transit or they are genetic off of transit and getting on to dockless devices. And so we have some -- a listing of the existing parking boxes that were implemented. We've got fourth and red river, Trinity and third, San Jacinto between fifth and sixth, fourth and San jac and third between nueces and San Antonio. Our upcoming priority areas of course the downtown is a significant priority for us. We will be implementing dockless parking boxes in the downtown area. The Texas school for the blind and visually impaired campus will be another area we're going to be installing boxes as well. And we had a great meeting with the Texas school for the blind and visually impaired and have addressed some of their concerns already, but we want to add those boxes to really provide those visual cues for people to place those in an orderly manner. And so we have a lot of locations on congress avenue. You saw from the use maps that congress avenue is a very popular area to ride those and so we will be placing dockless boxes there. And finally the capitol complex will also install boxes around the capitol. And ready for questions. >> Kitchen: Thank you very much. Do we have any speakers for this section? No? Okay. All right. Colleagues, does anyone have any questions? Councilmember Flannigan. >> Flannigan: On the fee, I'm curious what the thought [2:39:25 PM] process or opportunity to apply that to hard scape infrastructure. So better protected spaces. Also enforcement. Because I think one of the things we know is you can set up all the rules, but if nobody is enforcing them, we're trying to account for people behaving poorly. >> Those fees will consider a large enforcement staff to take care of dockless issues. And the other infrastructure piece is that we need to expand our infrastructure, our bike lane infrastructure. And so we think that because dockless users are going to be using these lanes of traffic that this is a perfect mechanism to fund and fill those gaps in where there's, you know, sidewalk is missing or it's broken or we need lanes striped on the street. >> Along with all of our other funding mechanisms, but we've introduced a new user so that new user should participate in that effort. >> Flannigan: And maybe a longer conversation around franchise model -- I'm not entirely sure why that's better. I don't know that other areas we've done that model have been effective. I'm really struggling to understand what problem that really solves. >> So maybe that's a longer conversation as we move towards the legislation to have with you in a work session. And certainly we would want to bring our law department to explain the intricacies of what a franchise model is as opposed to to limited operating authority. The idea, though, however regardless of the mechanism we use is that we've seen some dockless companies come and go this year. Some that have made investments and then pulled out. In fact, I understand this week we'll be giving out our first bikes that we recycled from one dockless company [2:41:25 PM] that came and left town and left about five or 800 bikes in town, we're recycling those to people who can't afford bikes. But we would like to try to attract companies that will have a longer term -- >> Flannigan: Investment. >> -- Investment, so if we limit those numbers and make that a competitive process, we think that we can achieve that. We certainly think that we're at a number of devices that although we may not be at full saturation, we're somewhere close to that depending on where we had ultimately with our -- head with our market. So dealing with more than about seven companies, I think would be a challenge from an organizational perspective. So our goal is to really define our market as a quality market and orderly market. >> Kitchen: Councilmember alter. >> Alter: Thank you. I want to echo some of the concerns councilmember Flannigan raised with respect to enforcement. I want to better understand how we're going to fund and staff enforcement. Glad to see we may have better rules so we have something to enforce. I also welcome an opportunity for us to accelerate our bike infrastructure capacity via increased fees on these businesses that are using our infrastructure essentially for free right now. I do have some questions specifically about the health and safety issues, so the data when you present it next time, if you can make sure to give us injuries relative to the number of vehicles, because we have far fewer dockless scooters than we have cars and so to really be able to understand what this chart is telling us, you really need to [2:43:27 PM] understand those percentages. And then I look forward to the CDC study, you mentioned mostly talking to those who have reported by ems they have a scooter. We know there are folks who are getting hurt by the scooters and going to urgent care or to their family doctor, and I know there were some efforts at some point to try to create some coding that could be in the public health system for them to identify scooter just like they do a measles outbreak or something. I would like to know where that is and how the nonems calls are being factored into the study and how we are talking to these emergency room operators, et cetera, to get their input into the process. Because anecdotally we're hearing that there are doctors who are seeing this a lot, and I don't have any way to assess that information from what we have now. So I would like some more information about that study. >> We have a representative of Austin public health here that maybe can answer some of that. >> Yes, councilmembers and mayor, Jeff Taylor. I'm in the epidemiology and disease surveillance unit. It was our unit that initially thought of doing this study back in early September when we and members of the Austin community started seeing scooters and were hearing about injuries. We worked with CDC, invited CDC to help us to describe what you're interested in, how many people are getting injured using these dockless electric scooters? What are the severity of their injuries? Where are they getting injured? So we focused on what we think are more severe injuries. Those injuries with a dockless electric scooter where ems was called or if the person visited an emergency department. We couldn't track, we didn't have the resources so track all injuries, particularly minor injuries where the person went to an urgent care center. There's over 40 urgent care centers in the city or county and we didn't have [2:45:27 PM] the resources to track them all. We looked at what we think were the more severe injuries. If they went to one of the emergency departments in Travis county or ems, 911 was called and ems responded. So -- and our time frame was about a three-month period as was noted on the slide, September 35 5 -- September 5 through November 30. We can answer some of those questions if you have them. >> Alter: My concern is whether or not the clockless scooters are creating a health problem and with regard to that I know what the anecdote is, what my personal experience is, but I don't know the reality from the data that you've selected. -- Collected. >> Yeah, we -- yes, we're collecting. What we did was make an effort working with the hospitals and our ems, emergency medical services, identify those individuals, made an effort to contact them, do a phone interview and/or reviewed their medical chart. So we started as a number for that three-month period, just over 270 incidents where an individual was injured, what we think was an electrical scooter and ems responded or ended up at an emergency department. The value of our study is we tried to interviews these individuals and learned some weren't on an electric scooter or a private scooter or actually a three-wheeled scooter. We made an effort to verify they were on a dockless electric scooter. 20% were actually hospitalized overnight. They were severe injuries. I think later this month we'll be able to give a more detailed report on this description or what we say is paint the picture about what those injuries were and [2:47:27 PM] the circumstances that surrounded the moments before they were in an accident. >> Kitchen: So we can look forward to those results. >> Alter: I have one more question, if I might. We've been talking throughout this process about how liability is assigned and that is a function of what is in the code and what is defined as the vehicle and if a dockless is hitting a pedestrian who is liable, how are can changes, under the section defining appropriate use and enforcement, how are those leading to clarifications of liability so people can be held accountable in these accidents in ways we're not able to do at this point? >> We still need to coordinate with the law department. We've had conversations with law and we can - - we believe we can convey the liability over to the company. But we still need to take a look at what their language looks like first and before we present to you the final ordinance. So that should be ready 12-2 should be ready for your review by March 15 in the backup information that we're going to submit. But we can circle back with you sooner and let you know. >> Alter: I would appreciate that. I want to clarify there's two different kinds of liability issues I'm talking about. One is what is the company liable for, but currently we can't even hold somebody for hitting somebody on a scooter unless a person dies. There's a lot of ambiguity in the legal framework. It was my understanding in my conversations that we were hoping to get to a point we were going to have greater clarity on that. And it's great if you can hold the companies liable for that, but that person committing it, also we have to have some mechanisms, you know, to address those concerns. >> So councilmember, with the rider ordinance, we're [2:49:28 PM] clearly assigning responsibilities to the user of those devices and so I think through that we will be able to better assign responsibility. Just like with any crash, whether it be a driver of a car or cycle or scooter, there is the necessity for us to count on the users to be responsible and stop and render aid. So we'll make sure that's part of it. I want to give a plug to the prosecutor's office, they helped us brainstorm through some of this legislation to make sure it's not only enforceable but can carry through the courts. We've also done that. I've heard you. I'll make sure that happens. >> Kitchen: Mayor and then councilmember pool. >> Mayor Adler: So best as I can tell going around the city, everybody here is in one of two groups. Half the people I run into have had near death experiences with a scooter and the other half of the city can't imagine life without a scooter. I'm interested in hearing the study with the CDC, and in fact all the data that we can with regard to the scooters. Because we're getting so caught in so much anectdotal information and everyone's experience or observation of these depends which anecdotal reality they've lived. So to be able to bring some data to this looking across the city is going to be critically important because into the vacuum is running a lot of anecdotal stuff. I'm anxious to see that study. I'm anxious to see the regulatory structure you have laid out and for the community to be able to react as well as the industry be able to react to it so we can start assessing that. My question really beyond that and new information goes to the geo facing capabilities associated with [2:51:28 PM] dockless vehicles. The ability to be able to geo fence out sidewalks and just bike lanes or bike lanes and not sidewalks or to geo fence changes in speed availability to an incredibley defined geographic range and actual speed range. And it appears as if the technology exists to be able to do that, save and except being in the downtown canyon area with buildings where people have the same problem when you walk out of a building, you turn on your gps and it doesn't know how to locate you on the street that you are in. I was just wondering with respect to how close those technologies are, how involved the companies are with us in developing and maturing those technologies. Taking a look at how that's working with the small cell rollout in the city. Because it seems as if that measure of geo fencing would answer a lot of the questions that we have. >> So mayor, I think that's a good question and I think that technology is coming along. I think there's several dockless company representatives here from several of the companies. If it pleases you, I would open it up to one of them or several of them answering quickly what the capability of their technology is. I don't know. >> Mayor and council, I represent lime. The geo fencing capabilities are not as accurate as we would like them to be. So for instance, I would say even outside of the downtown canyon area it would be probably impossible for the gps to for instance know if you were on a sidewalk right here versus a few feet over in a bike lane. And so that is one of the major issues because when you use a geo fencing [2:53:30 PM] technology to change speeds, for instance if you wanted a lower speed on the sidewalk versus in the street, you know, it could cause a lot of issues with a rider not knowing exactly where they were and then the potential for the scooter to start to slow down while a scooter was, say, in car traffic. Or in the appropriate scooter lane or bike lane or in car traffic with a shared lane. And then, you know, you wanted to geo fence the sidewalk next to it to a much lower speed, the gps might assume the rider is on the sidewalk in that geo fenced area and that could cause issues regarding safety. And so what we try to do is educate riders on being safe and in general we tell riders not to be on the sidewalk to begin with, although we understand why they choose to ride on the sidewalk for safety reasons. So, you know, generally what we use the geo fencing technology for is much broader, larger areas. So you think the capitol grounds. And we are working right now to do the same along the butler trail. But even just an example, the -- where congress bridge is, where we have the geo fence -- if we were to try to stop a scooter that was entering the butler trail where we currently have no ride Zones and implement fines to riders who do go down there and park a scooter down there, we fine them, but for instance if we had a geo fence area that would slow down the scooter or stop the scooter and they were to be coming down congress bridge, if they crossed that plain where they were going over the butler trail and all of a sudden, you know, they enter that geo fence zone, from above it looks the same where you are. Sometimes you can't tell what level you're on. These are the type of issues that we're dealing with in [2:55:32 PM] terms of the geo fencing technology, which is improving, but that's sort of where we are right now. >> Kitchen: Did you want to answer also? >> With bird rides. The geo fencing technology has evolved very much over the last year. We do have a continuum of solutions that sometimes are better -- a better case, a better use case depending on what issue needs to be resolved. Very much like my colleague at lime has talked about, big geo zone areas, for example, at the capitol, but we do run into use cases not only because the gps isn't always 100% accurate, but also because it's not always the best solution. With that said, it does continue to evolve and we do have some new solutions coming down the pipeline that could address problems in very specific areas. So happy to continue to work with you all and in partnership with atd as those evolve. >> Kitchen: Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Kitchen: Councilmember pool. >> Pool: Along those same lines and maybe the scooter company reps could stay. The first question was time of day. One of the early conversations I had with -- I don't remember which company it was, Joe maybe it was your company, was that the scooters were not going to operate after a certain hour in the evening. And I would lining to know where that is -- like to know where that is current and if in a fact they are turned off, and then I was trying to remember what time of day the person who was on the scooter going the wrong way on the access road was riding. I know it was at night. >> It was about 1:30 A.M. >> Pool: To my point, I thought the scooters were actually going to be turned off at an hour well before 1:30 in the morning. [2:57:32 PM] I'm curious to know how did that happen and are you turning them off at night. >> Currently the rules don't require them to be turned off and so our scooters do operate 24 hours a day, although there are less of them on the road because generally the time they are charging from daytime use. >> Pool: And Mr. Redfern, you mentioned in some of the conversations with staff that you were going to be working with the companies about having a bright line on when they would be turned off because they were hard to see and there are accidents more likely in the evening. >> So we're hearing from people who are working downtown who may be, say, service industry workers feel more comfortable instead of walking getting on a device and being able to make it back to their vehicle with all the cash tips they've got in their pockets. So we've not had that conversation about limiting during a specific hour right now because we are hearing those stories from people that there is some demand for usage for good usage even after 1:30 in the morning. >> Pool: I'm sorry, I missed your name. >> Blanca la board with bird. Currently we do cease operations at midnight. So you cannot begin a ride past midnight. >> Pool: Well, I'll be interested to see how this area develops and maybe get some more input from staff on what the best practice would be on that. I'll run through these really fast. The gentleman from public health, was it Mr. Taylor? You mentioned that you were talking with people who had had accidents and were endeavoring to find them and get more specifics. Did I get your name right, sir, Mr. Taylor? Taylor, great. So I understand there are limits with regard to [2:59:33 PM] sharing data that pickup prevents but I know we can anonymize the data so that we can get information from the hospitals and have it be more accurate and complete, and I think that has impeded our knowledge of how many incidents have ended up in emergency rooms that may or may not have been reported to the city. My understanding from talking with staff, there was a bit of a gap between what the hospitals know and what our city staff know. So do you think that there's a way that we can anonymize the data and get a comprehensive flow of data from the hospital so that CDC coming into town -- and maybe that data set is already complete, but so we know going forward what we're really looking at? >> Those were some excellent questions. First, yes, the health department does protect patient information. The health department also has legal authority to investigate injuries. So that legal authority we used to work with the hospitals to help them share the data they had collected related to scooter injuries. We feel very confident that working with the hospitals that we've gotten the information we needed from the hospitals for anybody who was seen -- who was coded asker a dockless scooter -- electric scooter injury. So we feel comfortable that we have completed our data collection. As a matter of fact today is the last day we were going to collect data. We needed to stop this, and we feel very good about the data we've collected for this time frame. >> Pool: That's really comforting to know that. Will we -- Mr. Redfern, will we have ongoing a stream of data continuing from the hospital so that we can continue to collect the data into the future? >> I think in partnership with the Austin public health department, I think that we will, yes. We have discussed -- we're having ongoing discussions [3:01:35 PM] at Austin public health along with Austin transportation. There's a lot of new modalities out there. I learned of a new one, Nev, I've seen pictures of, I didn't know the acronym. I'm thinking as an epidemiologist, injuries associated with them, are they getting in accidents? Are they hitting something? Are other vehicles hitting them? So we hope to continue some surveillance for all these, the hover boards, the uni cycles you see. >> Pool: I'm still waiting for my jettisons jet pack -- jetsons jet pack. >> Kitchen: Councilmember, did you have a question? Okay. >> Tovo: Thank you. I have a couple. I came in a bit late and I just want to verify I'm understanding correctly, that the rules are going to be -- excuse me, the ordinance, the adjustments to 1212 are going to be circulated beginning on the 15th. Is that correct? >> Correct. >> Tovo: Are there also acopying rules being revised or are the changes that we've been discussing all going to be embedded within the revised ordinance? >> Any changes we're talking about would be ordinance revisions. The rules as they exist now are completed and done. >> Tovo: Okay. Great. You know, as we hear new feedback we've been trying to forward that on. I hear about scooters on a extremely regular basis. >> All the good stuff, right? >> Tovo: With everything ranging from concerns about scooter pickups, and I think we forwarded some on some of those kinds of concerns on to your staff, and I hope that will be addressed. I think the intent is to try to put some regulations around scooter pickups. >> Yes. >> Tovo: As well as some of the other issues that my colleagues have already emphasized. I just want to underscore how important it is to really get the enforcement, get a stronger enforcement piece. I know you're working hard on that. [3:03:35 PM] >> Yes, ma'am. >> Tovo: Among the feedback I hear from business owners and residents and lots of others, it is that. That seems to be the issue that people are talking about the most. What I want to understand right now a little bit better is the feedback that you're receiving about trail use. When you say it's neutral, does that mean that most of the thousand responsibilities were neutral or that there were a sufficient number of strong positives and a sufficient number of strong negatives they canceled each other out to be neutral? >> I knew I was gonna step into it when I mentioned the trail pilot. I don't have that information. I just received some statistics just real brief, nothing detailed. >> Tovo: Sure. >> From pard staff. Because they couldn't be here I wanted to provide a little bit of information about that. >> Tovo: So when that's available I think that is something that I know my office would really like much more detailed information about and just, you know, off the top of my head I want to get a sense of what some of the positive feedback, some of the negative feedback, are those 1,000 unique respondents? Are some people writing multiple times? >> Yes. >> Tovo: You know, that is something I'm hearing a lot about, in particular -- particularly concerns about scooters that they're finding in creeks and, you know, one of my staff members estimates in the last month or so she's seen four or five scooters in shoal creek since the pilot began. >> Sure. >> Tovo: So that is a heighth environmental concern. >> -- Huge environmental concern. >> Yes. >> Tovo: I think in addition to doing a great job educating users I think that's the company's responsibility as well as the city's. I think the penalties for having a scooter, having one of your scooters in a creek need to be commensurate with the environmental risk it presents. >> Sure. We're classifying that as vandalism, property vandalism. People can voice their [3:05:36 PM] displeasure about the service without having to put our environmental features at risk. We have worked with the spill response unit and are developing sops right now in how to handle that. We're talking about being able to back charge for their time spent removing these devices. We've also talked about the Austin city code has penalties for environmental issues, but there's also a state code that is related to environmental issues as well. And if the Austin code isn't followed, there could be some state issues that come into play, state violations, and those carry some pretty hefty penalties so we're working departmentally to address these issues. >> Tovo: Great. I'm really glad you're approaching it from those different perspectives because it is really a significant environmental threat and we should treat it as such. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Kitchen: I'm sorry, we're really running late. >> I'd encourage people if they see scooters to dial 311 so we can get them removed as opposed to ignoring them and continue to letting them pile. >> Tovo: We certainly have been. >> Kitchen: I'm going to take one more and then we have to move on from this. Thank you very much, councilmember Ellis. >> Ellis: Interesting discussion. This is probably the catch 22 of technological advancement, you've got to see how that plays out in the real world and make sure everyone is safe. I have a question about slide 7 and the safety data. Obviously, in this chart our goals would be zero, all the way across the board. To make sure that everybody is as safe as healthy as possible. But I was curious if there was any cross-tabulation, like, if it's a pedestrian and a car or car and a scooter? Because when I see this, somebody could make an argument that being a pedestrian is more dangerous than using a scooter, but when we go outside and we kind of see how we are interacting in the real world when you put everything in play in realtime, you know, I would think that walking is the safest one. So I'm curious if there's [3:07:39 PM] any cross-tabulation reflected in this or if there's some other data set that I could see that would reflect that? >> Good question. Austin public health looked at scooter-related injuries and also with the companies and Austin transportation we have user data, and I think it presented in one of the earlier slides, talked about the hundreds of thousands of rentals there are each month. And but not everybody who uses a scooter gets injured. So we're going to look at that, what we call denominator data, user data, compared to the severe injury data we have to do that rate. So how many people actually use a scooter and don't get injured? It's really tens of thousands more than the 270 or so injuries that we identified. Our study wasn't to compare injuries related to motor vehicles or bicycles or motorcycles, just looking at dockless electric scooters. >> Ellis: Okay, thank you. >> Flannigan: I'm still very interested in physical regulations on the devices. I'm a frequent user of scooters myself and there's quite a bit of variation in how safe I feel depending on what version of the technology I'm on, the speed of the sealer racing, width of the handlebars all feels different so in the study I'm really interested to know -- because there are accidents that are just somebody falling off the scooter that didn't actually interact with anything expels really getting into that level of cross-tab, as you put it, I think is where I'm really interested to see, because is it a technology inherently unsafe because it's just people -- and is there a physical solution to that in the devices themselves? Bigger tires, bigger platforms, whatever? Or is it, like, a lot of people who are drinking? In which case, I got wis too I'm not stopping, or that level of detail is gonna be very interesting. >> Kitchen: Thank you. Thank you all very much. [3:09:40 PM] >> Yes, ma'am. >> Kitchen: We'll look forward to the backup and this being on our agenda and I know there will be further discussions from the full council at our work session. >> Thank you, councilmembers, mayor. >> Kitchen: Yes. So the last item on our agenda relates to urban trails, and this is an update for us on the urban trails projects. My understanding is that the way that we've proceeded with urban trails is that there's a requirement to report back to the -- our relevant committees, and this is part of that. I'm sorry to do this to you but as you know we're really tight on time, and I've looked at the backup. It's really wonderful information, so if you want to just hit the high points and then folks can ask you questions. >> Fantastic. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> Thanks for having me, urban trails. I'm also working on safe routes to school and neighborhood partnering program so that's community services division. Today we'll go over a little bit really quickly over the program, urban trail plan requirements, why we're here and project updates. So for any new council folk that didn't know what an urban trail was, it's a wide concrete trail that is for transportation and recreation. The goal is to connect to on street bicycle networks, adequate width for all users, amenities and features, including adequate funding not just for installation but maintaining and operating them in the future. Then of course a lot of trails are in environmentally sensitive areas, so making sure we're preserving and improving wildlife. Quick snapshot of the urban trail plan, the ones in blue are tier 1, Orange, tier 2, ones that are dotted are the ones that haven't been built yet and ones that are solid lines are existing so just you can kind of see, this is where we choose our projects from, this is what we're working off of. Again, as you sid, we're here for 30% -- at 30% we're supposed to brief the boards [3:11:40 PM] and commissions. Some are past 30% but were paused for a while or we needed to get more information, have better alignment. This is really a touch point making sure we're on the right track. So as part of these 30% briefings we've already gone to the pac, pedestrian advisory council, urban transportation commission, bicycle advisory council, we're here talking to you guys and lastly will go to the environmental commission. We Lyme like to give more information before we go there, they like tree pesach in-depth doll sometimes we go there later than we come to the others. First we'll talk about country club creek trail. I want to show file connectivity, furthest south in blue is almost complete. We're so close. In that we'll connect to the part that's existing in green. The part we're talking about today is in purple here. This is country club creek phase two and three, and that connects on up to some crush granite park trails that will get you all the way to town lake. The connection is really from Mabel Davis park all the way up through to town lake. So we split this into two sections. Part in blue is ready to go. This is going to be our on-street section, similar to Rio grande. We didn't have enough room to stay within the creek during this section so we'll have a protected two-way bike lane on the west side of the street. And in the south side you see in purple that is going to be able to stay within the creek at this point in our design and that is looking to go to construction in fall of 2021 through 2022. So quick project scope, 12-foot wide, approximately 1 mile, lighting will be included on this, and the estimate for this is 6.25 million. This is funded by 2016 bond for design and construction and we're about 60% design. We've had a lot of public outreach, not just -- these are -- some of these are specific to the project but also through our map, annual mobility annual plan, capital project explorer, I'll go quickly. [3:13:43 PM] Our next meeting will be in April and may and we'll have one before construction so people know what to expect before construction. Walnut creek phase two, there's a lot going on here but this is a section we're talking about circled in red, up north the part in green is northern walnut creek phase one. This section will take it all the way to 35. The section between the circled section and lower green section is a part we're doing a preliminary engineering report on so I'll see full connectivity all the way from walnut creek park to balconies from mopac down to govalle parks long trail segment we're working through. This is the piece funded through design and construction. This is just a little zoom-in of it from the metropolitan part so you can see a little layout. We have connections to Lamar, as well as the neighborhood where feasible and we would stop at 35. This is a 12-foot wide concrete trademark 1.67 miles, 6.62 million is total cost and you can see some of the funding sources here. If you did the math quickly you'd see the funding doesn't add up to how much the project cost is but we have a few projects that look like they may come in under so we're watching and seeing where estimates land as we're working through at last 14 and a few other things that changed our scope significantly, we're trying to see where all the projects lay out and reallocate funding to get as far as we can within our trails. This one is exiled for mid-- going into construction in mid2020 to mid '22. Some of our public outreach we've done and we continue to do throughout the project. So Austin phase two, this is one of the ones we got campo funding for, on pause and not included in the 2016 bond until we got campo funding for it. We'll connect all the way to the city of manor so I'll be able to bike, walk, ride all the way down to the city of Austin, that section there [3:15:43 PM] circled. So zoom-in of where we'd be connecting to, along the rail there. So this is 11, 12-foot concrete trail, depending on what issues we have along the way. It's approximately 2.9 miles and total cost is 7.8 million. Travis county actually put some money into this project after we got our campo grant as well so we're able to leverage our 2016 bond to help get Travis county to put in as well as campo and this one is one that adds up to be a little more than the total cost so we may be able to pull some of these funds to help fund some of the other projects. This one is 60%. Somewhere 2021 to 2022 is the frame for now. And then again we've had outreach, definitely reached out with manor since we were connecting there. Is reviewing all the plans. There are a few other landowners that we need to work with as well and then Travis county, as I said, they're putting in money and working with us through the design. For violet crown trademark you can start to see -- I'm trying to show connectivity and wide because it's exciting, we're starting to get to the point where it's not small pieces but longer pieces of trail we're connecting. The part in green we completed last year and folks at pard as well as hill country conservancy built that all the way down to slaughter. Now we're working on the blue piece and that would provide a continuous trail. There is some part that is a sidewalk connection but you would be able to get continuously all the way to slaughter down to zilker taking the Barton corridor or violet biking trail. This is the last piece of the puzzle, really exciting. A little more zoom in, we'll be going under and then hopefully be able to connect that with future txdot projects with mopac and connecting down to the sidewalk that would connect to William cannon. This is a 10-11-foot wide concrete, and staylock, [3:17:45 PM] decomposed granite mixed with a binder so that way it holds up better in wet conditions. This is something we've tried on a few other places within violet crown trail. It's working pretty well but we're continuing to pilot it and see how it works over time. It's more expensive initially but over maintenance we're hoping it will be a good solution. You can see total costs, 2012 bond funding, 2016 and also our campo match, which we got. This one was on pause, which is why it's 90%. Now that we have funding and getting our agreements ready with txdot we can move forward to construction early 2020. Then we've had multipublic outreach on this one as well. True our public outreach we changed the alignment to make sure that it met the expectations of the neighborhood and then we'll continue to have public outreach as we get closer to design -- closer to construction so folks know what to expect. This is just a list of all our current trail projects. I'm here so if you want to ask any questions about any of these. The ones that are Orange, those are the ones that are either in construction right now or substantially complete. The ones with the asterisks are the ones that I'll be coming to you next with this type of update. Then you can kind of see the status of the other ones listed here as well. And that's that. Quick as I can go. [ Laughter ] >> Kitchen: That was excellent. >> Okay. >> Kitchen: Thank you very much. I'm going to ask the first question here and see if others have questions. I want to talk about the Bergstrom spur. >> Sure. >> Kitchen: I really appreciate the chance to talk to but that. We've been working on that and for my colleagues, that's the piece of land that goes from -- well, I don't know if you have it on a map here you can show them, but basically it goes all the way to the airport from south Austin. So it's a piece of land that it's -- we own parts of it but not all of it so it's been very important to me that we chase this enough so that we at least secure the land while we're trying to secure the funding. I'm very concerned that this area, we'll lose the ability [3:19:45 PM] to keep this as a trail as south Austin grows if we don't secure all the property. So I'm just highlighting that. And we've been working on that. We were able to secure the planning from campo. >> Right. >> Kitchen: But that doesn't help us with owning the land. And so this is just a heads-up to my colleagues, and we've been talking -- I'm going to be seeking additional dollars out of the 2018 bond to see if we can purchase the part of this that still is owned by up. So the other parts are -- we either own them, they're Austin energy or we have the ability to, we think, to obtain ownership so it's just that one part that's not. For y'all it's a dotted line right now, right? What's interesting about it, is it goes all the way to the airport from congress. It's actually further west of congress and Ben white, it's near there. >> To Benson? >> Kitchen: There's a lot of potential for us along the way. >> As part of the study we're working with cap metro to see the idea of transit and trail along this section. >> Kitchen: Yeah. This could potentially be transit and trail and we have the dollars for the campo study, which I know we've been talking with you about okay. So I just wanted to make that comment. Do y'all have -- councilmember Flannigan? >> Flannigan: Just something small. When you put a map of the city please include all of the city. >> Yes, sir. >> Flannigan: Half of my district is cut off this map. >> Kitchen: We'll echo that from the south too. >> Flannigan: Thank you. >> Kitchen: Other. Other questions? No? All right. Thank you very much and thank you for all the work that you do on these trails. >> Sure. >> Kitchen: It's really exciting. We're really starting to get a whole network as we can see from this. [3:21:46 PM] The last couple of bonds have helped us and working with campo is helping us too so we will continue to work with you on Bergstrom. >> Yep. >> Kitchen: So we can secure that land and then work through the process of getting it planned. >> Appreciate it. Thanks, guys. >> Kitchen: Thank you. All right, colleagues, is there anything else from anyone? Nope? All right, thank you, all.