City Council Discussion Transcript – 03/09/2020 Title: City of Austin Channel: 6 - COAUS Recorded On: 3/9/2020 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 3/9/2020 Transcript Generated by SnapStream ================================== Please note that the following transcript is for reference purposes and does not constitute the official record of actions taken during the meeting. For the official record of actions of the meeting, please refer to the Approved Minutes. [12:16:42 PM] >> It's Monday, March ninth and we're at the Austin central library. I would like to welcome everyone including our distinguished colleagues from the city of Austin. Mayor, would you like to open your council meeting? >> Mayor Adler: [Inaudible]. If you would just put in the record all the pertinent information so we'll go ahead and convene the Austin city council also here on March 9, 2020. >> Thank you, mayor. Thanks, everybody, for coming here today and welcome to the sixth joint work session between the cap metro board and the Austin city council, an unprecedented sense of collaboration. An unprecedented sense of collaboration between our two groups. And I'm grateful for that. The second thing I want to say is today represents the [12:17:43 PM] culmination of an awful lot of work by our staff and city staff, and a large volume of consultants who have been working on this project for up to two years. I want to say thank you to both our staffs and to those consultants, a number of whom have been working around the clock over the last several weeks to get us here today. Thank you to staff, city staff and a number of consultants. Today I think represents a turning point, I believe. Today we present a viable multi--generational plan that can move a ton of people, more than 250,000 people a day when we get it all built out. After today I think the question will be not what should we build, but how much and how quickly? At the beginning of this process we promised it would be the most transparent and community-led effort ever in the city of Austin and I think we've held true to that statement. [12:18:43 PM] We've reached over 40,000 people in the last two years, both in-person and online. Throughout central Texas both in our service area and outside. These engagement stats are important because they signify that we're here bringing forward the wishes and passions of our fellow citizens in central Texas. They care about the city of Austin, they care about the region and they want to protect what makes it great. That's the job we have before us and project connect is integral to that job. What we're really doing here today is preserving and supporting a great place to live, one that's home to 2 million people. And in 20 years home to approximately four million people. I for one am looking forward to our discussion today and the days to come. After today the nature of our discussion I think changes rather dramatically. We pivot from what a regional multi-generational plan looks like to how much and how quickly do we build. With that, mayor, would you [12:19:44 PM] like to make some opening remarks? >> Mayor Adler: I just wanted to echo what you've said. This is really an exciting moment in time. I really do feel that our region is at a fork in the road. We have unprecedented community engagement and involvement in the development of the program that's being presented. We have unprecedented cooperation between the city staff and the staff of capital metro, and I want to thank both staffs for working on this. The amount of work and effort and coordination and research and study and reflection of what we've been hearing in community is wonderful. I'm looking forward to this presentation. I have already enjoyed looking at these visuals as they started appearing in the media last week and with the appearance of those [12:20:45 PM] visuals in themide I can't I have been stopped I don't know how many times over the last 48 hours. People in our community that are basically demanding of us that we finally get this done and that we don't nibble around the edges, but that we actually do something that is transformational and really protective of the spirit and soul of this city for generations to come. Just a really exciting time. Mr. Chairman, I'm eager for us to take this next step. >> Thank you, mayor. Spencer, Gina, any comments? >> Thank you, wade. I really like to thank our councilmembers and the cap metro board for inviting us here today to present to you this has really been the [12:21:46 PM] result of an unprecedented level of cooperation and coordination between our city departments and cap metro and our community. Each and every person that we heard from and our online councilmembers and the board here challenged us to really craft not only a system plan, but a way forward for Austin. Hundreds of hours literally collectively between all of our teams are devoted to this on a weekly basis and we're really proud of what we'll hear today from our teams. And really this is an fount us to present to you what we've heard and I want to thank Randy in particular for his leadership on the cap metro side and on the city side. Of course, under city manager Spencer cronk has given us the strong agenda here that we've advanced with our finance department and you will hear from Greg canally on the city team, [12:22:48 PM] but really we support the recommended system plan that you'll hear today and I'm going to turn it over now to city manager Spencer cronk. >> I'm actually just going to turn it to Randy to keep the conversation going. >> Thank you. I'll make mine really quick. I think chair you hit a lot of the points I want to make. I want to take a quick second and do some thank you's. I do really very much thank the board and councilmembers for all the time you're putting this. You have a considerable amount of competing priorities, but I do know that this is one of the most important topics in our city, in our region, so the amount of time you've dedicated to us whether it's briefings or these meetings I really appreciate it. Six joint meetings is really a lot. Thank you. I want to thank the staff, both the cap metro staff, the city staff, the consultants, everyone that's [12:23:48 PM] been involved on that technical point of view. We have a community advisory group. We have a technical advisory group. Gina mentioned hours a week. The binder in front of of you and now posted on project connect.com so everything is super transparent to everyone involved and everyone in the community is literally thousands and thousands of hours of collective work. The staff has done an amazing job and I think one thing that I really want to emphasize is the credibility of the staff. They are all transportation or finance experts and they are working together as a team to put a package together for policymakers to have consideration and ultimately give you ultimately all the information you need to move the projects forward. I want to also thank the city manager Spencer cronk, but also Gina and Greg. I literally have never had a better partner from another agency any time in my career more than what's going on here. The relationship between cap [12:24:49 PM] metro and the city in my opinion could not be better and I hope the public at large understands how tightly we are working together. It has to be one plan to integrate to everything else that's happening in the city and their leadership has just been phenomenal. There is never a phone call or email or hour that they won't put into this thing. I really appreciate that. Lastly I want to thank our community. This has been some some ways a 20 year conversation in Austin, but especially the last two years it's been hundreds of meetings, Jackie neuralburg has led most of those as our community information manager. The chair said over 40,000 people engaged. Our community deserves a better transportation system, they made it allowed and clear that they expect more and they've contributed significantly to the technical and the community aspects of this thing. So at the end of the day, thank you to everyone that's been involved. It's clear that we have a transparent process. Everything again is on [12:25:49 PM] project connect.com and we encourage people to get involved and we've heard this people want a transformational change on how we do mobility in the city and we hope today what you see will deliver that. The the last thing I want to mention is Dave couch is our project connect officer. Dave has literally worked on this program since the day he got to Austin for 18 straight months he's been the lead. Unfortunately Dave is feeling a little ill today and Dave can't be with us. We can wave to Dave on TV. I do want to thank Dave for all his leadership. He's done an amazing job. Stepping in today is Brian Buchanan and they are a partner. Brian is the lead consultant on our program manager unit and Brian will be actually doing a couple of pieces that Dave was going to do and knows as a team they know it integral. I wanted to give that nuance of -- people might be wondering where Dave is. Hopefully Dave will recover. Brian is certainly capable of stepping in and delivering that information. So with that, I guess we turn it back to you or are we ready to go? >> I think we're ready to go. >> So with that I guess [12:26:51 PM] Jackie I'll turn it over to you to discuss community engage. Thank you. >> Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Jackie nuremberg. It is my pleasure to walk us through today's agenda. We'll begin with a review of our process where we've been and where we're headed. Then we'll talk about the project connect recommended system plan. Then we'll move to O to imagining our future, what it looks like. And then we'll talk about funding and governance and next steps. >> So a recap of where we've been. This is our sixth joint work council -- board and council work session. We kicked off our alternative analysis process back in April of 2019. We've been through a couple of are work session is since then. Last time we met was January 14th for the joint work session. And since then we've been out in the community trying to educate folks about what [12:27:51 PM] project connect is, what impact it could bring to their lives. We've been coordinating with our partners at the city, convention center, aviation department, Austin transportation department and others. We've held several pecan meetings, project connect ambassador meetings, as well as several technical advisory meetings and now we've arrived at the critical milestone and we're very pleased for the staff to present the recommended system plan. Moving forward we'll be doing a robust phase of community engagement. We'll be getting feedback from the community on this recommended system plan and that will take us to may 28th when we will have our next joint council work session and our board will vote to approve the plan. Following that we'll be doing a lot more community engagement as we get closer to a potential referendum. >> A little bit about our [12:28:51 PM] community engagement process. I mentioned these last few months we've been out educating the community. We have engaged with over 40,000 people. We still have a long way to go so we've got our work cut out for us. This month we're very excited that we'll be kicking off a big community education campaign and next month we'll be holding a series of public meetings in every district to inform people about the new recommended plan and to get their feedback on that plan, but while we're planning on holding 10 of these and you will see those listed on the slide, we realize that a lot of people will never make it to our meetings so we'll need to go to them. And we have a lot of ways that we plan to do that. In addition to our public meetings we will also have a virtual open house up on our website and we'll be pushing that through social media and other channels so that people can participate digital Ali, but we'll also be activating at community events like the kite festival, going out to neighborhood meetings, and [12:29:51 PM] frankly, any meeting that anybody invites us to to get the word out and get feedback from people because this is community's plan and we want everybody to be on board. Once we hit may 28th and the plan is adopted by our board, the community education campaign will continue and we will continue to do event activations and presentations all over the city and central Texas. And then finally, if the community does approve the plan we will begin our engagement with the community on the preliminary engineering and design work so that will be an exciting new phase. So with that I will hand it over to Brian Buchanan who will talk to us about the recommended system plan. >> If we can pause for just a second. Any questions for Jackie about where we've come to this point? I'm going to ask them to try to get through their session and then pause for a second for cross-examination. So before we move along, any questions for Jackie? [12:30:53 PM] >> Mayor Adler: I really like that. I know we have that date in may, but I want us to take a look at maybe we can get it done sooner than that so that we can get a proposal out to the public sooner. I know we need to decide it in may. I wanted to put on the table let's see how we progress and how we go and we can finalize those dates as we get closer. >> Thank you, mayor. >> Councilmember kitchen. >> Kitchen: Thank you, Jackie. I wanted to ask you to just speak real quickly about the outreach effort. You mentioned that you understand that people can't always get to the meetings and stuff like that. I think it's important for us to speak about the efforts resiliented to really reaching out and provide an punt to the community to speak with their voice as opposed to more of the outreach that's more of the top down. [12:31:54 PM] So could you speak to that in just a minute? >> Sure. We try with every round of engagement, public meetings, we try to get out to the community in a greater fashion so we sometimes will set up at our bus stops, we'll set up at a food pantry, for example. We will activate tables at events all over the city and in central Texas. And in addition we would like to reach out to some neighborhoods that we rarely hear from and we need to hear from those unheard voices. So we'll be taking the survey out to the neighborhoods as well really doing a very granular form of engagement to get people's feedback on the plan. >> Thank you, Jackie. Councilmember alter. >> Alter: I wanted to note there's one more that we're trying to redevelop. The district 10 one was right in the middle of the [12:32:55 PM] land development code discussions. >> Thank you, yes. We've had a few changes but we'll be rescheduling that one. >> Thank you, councilmember. Any other questions, comments? Very good. We'll pass the baton to Brian Buchanan, our lead consultant, stepping in for Mr. Couch. >> Thank you for the opportunity today and I really want to thank Dave for the opportunity today to stand before you. With a recommendation on the system plan so building up to that you remember a conversation about building a system that not only helps with today's mobility challenges, but tomorrow's mobility challenges. And with that we looked at different systems and different capacities of different types of modes and in vehicles. And you might remember a conversation about in 2040 a ridership on the Orange or blue lines of around 68,000 riders. So we looked at the different capacities and you can see with a brt platooned system running about every five minutes we have a capacity of around 65,000, [12:33:59 PM] which is very close to the 65,000 ridership number that we spoke about in January. So that helped us inform our recommendation that you will see here in a couple of minutes of a light rail in these higher ridership corridors. You can see as you build light rail and you build up the different trains and different concepts and different frequencies, you can get different types of capacities at each station as we move forward. And also as of the future proofing of the system as we get into the tunnel conversation and the tunnel recommendation coming up on the next slide, we can run up to four car trains in those areas of downtown that will once again provide more capacity to the system moving forward. So the downtown transit system allows the whole entire system to operate more efficiently and more frequently through the soared, so we have travel [12:35:01 PM] times R. Time savings with the downtown tunnel implementation. Safer for everyone. Not putting those modes modes all together bringing one down below introduces or reduces conflicts associates with bikes, peds, automobiles, all the above. Anybody that is a street user or right-of-way user in the Austin area. And it also helps us stand our transit property print by allowing us to put another transit element below grade, some of the existing transit elements, slouch as metro rapid, rapid access, allows those to continue in an uni uni am needed network with the tunnel being below the rapid transit. Also an opportunity for place making and partnerships. Transit incubatorred development, transit stations, ordinaries, some renderings that Ms. Merit is going to speak about, it's a [12:36:01 PM] great opportunity to link transit with other elements to bring people where they live, work and play and gets an opportunity to build -- really change infrastructure to support transit. And it reduces conflicts with other users and based on the preliminary estimates of where the tunnel limits might be, we anticipate that we could probably reduce about 20% of the intersections that we would go through at grade or at the surface with the tunnel. So it allows us once again more reliability on the transit system, but also does not necessarily interfere with the mobile traffic up at street grade. And future proofing, obviously building a system that allows us to expand in the future. The downtown area is one of the most constricted areas as far as placing stations. Block lengths basically dictate station links and right now our limit in downtown is about a three-car station. [12:37:01 PM] So with a tunnel we can lengthen that station area allowing us to run four-car trains in the future. So with that staff's recommendation before you today is light rail on both the Orange line and the blue line. The Orange line would run from slaughter up to tech ridge, would be light rail. And then the blue line would run from the airport across downtown over to republic square and then go up to the north Lamar transit center as part of that element. Sharing some of the infrastructure with the Orange line along that corridor. Metro rail we make some improvements, station and operational I am movements with the red line program and also on the green line would be a new commuter rail service to colony park with potential extensions to Elgin and manor. And then on metro rapid, we would recommend a gold line, [12:38:02 PM] which would be a bus rapid transit from ACC highland downtown across to the downtown station and across the republic square. That would be bus rapid transit and a dedicated transit way as much as possible along that corridor. With the potential and ultimate desire to convert that to light rail in the future. And then along with that continue with the 801 and 803 type service that we currently have out there with seven new routes, which is approximately 100 miles of new service and 200 stations. Metro express searching some of those areas on the outskirts of town and bringing people in, eight new routes, five routes outside the service area. With that would be around 24 new park and rides and 10 are outside of the service area associated with that program. Melt throw bus continue to provide better bus service and amenities such as [12:39:03 PM] benches and covered stops, and then metro access would obviously dovetail into that with enhanced demand response service. Plus along with that are some other things such as zero emissions, bringing an all electric fleet to cap metro, improved computer tech, one account for all your mobility needs, and improving the customer interface and the ability for users to use the systems. Build upon the great circulators in the pickup service that is currently out there with new circulator Zones across the whole entire region. And then some ancillary and support facilities sorted with the improvements on the system. So that is our system recommendation before you today. Under tap 1 is a map that represents -- under tab 1 is a map that represents the wording associated with that slide. So with that I'm going to pass it to meg to have a [12:40:05 PM] conversation, kind of imagining what the future may look like. >> Let's pause and see if anybody has questions for Brian before we go on to the next section. Any questions? Member strait son. >> Yes. I heard it recently that some concerns expressed in the community as this was first rolled out by cap metro for consideration on Friday that with the consideration of light rail as an option, I think this is the first time we've thrown out to community that this is the community is to go with light rail as opposed with the bus rapid transit lines. Specifically along the Orange what I heard comments from the public was that, oh, well, gee, if you get on it at some place like Lamar transit or tech ridge trying to get downtown, that could take, quote, unquote, an hour or more. [12:41:07 PM] Do we have the specific times arrest at least some ideas of what times -- how this would improve the reliability, the connectivity, the speed of the commute for somebody that's coming from either far south Austin or far north Austin if they were to get on this dedicated pathway that that that's on a train. If we were to run it, what we see here, every 10 minutes or perhaps every five minute frequency? >> Sure. I don't have specifics on individual trips per se, but in general, which nobody does this, but to put it in context. From end to end on the Orange line somewhere around an area. If you think you can drive from tech ridge to slaughter today in an hour and make your trip, so that's kind of an ideal situation. I think that the ability for people to make shorter -- reliability I think is a huge part of this conversation is being in a reliable transit area, [12:42:08 PM] having a dedicated lane associated just for transit, performs a reliable trip so you know regardless of how long it might take, you know it's going to take that long. So we do have some other trip times and staff would be happy to provide that. We have some stuff, I just don't have them with me today as part of this presentation. But there are some trips that have been built to give some examples of somebody riding the system maybe for a commute or something like that. >> But it sounds like it should be faster -- it should be faster once the system is in place riding from tech ridge to downtown than it would be trying do it on the 801 even today at this point. >> I'll add a little context. So a lot of people's current perception of transit in most cities when you're on a bus is unless you have a dedicated or priority lane, it could be the same or slower than traffic. So a good example might be I know you take the 95 express [12:43:09 PM] bus a fair amount, maybe even today. Hope it was a good trip. >> Great trip. >> But the reason that works so well and why demand has gone over 60 some percent increase in ridership on that line is the reliability and speed of travel. So there is no question the line that we're proposing, if you get on the light rail at say your point, tech ridge or slaughter or north Lamar transit center or crestview, you will beat every car getting to, say, this building downtown because that's why it works so well in overrer city in the world. So if you went to Washington, D.C. Or beijing, to Seattle, it doesn't matter. That's what rail does in a dedicated rate of way that nothing else can do. You literally have the ability to bypass traffic and that's why the demand would be so much high four that exclusive right-of-way and for that speed and reliability. So we have some work that was done back for the January meeting and I know the team is working on more stuff that they'll be showing in all the district meetings for samples, for people in those districts and neighborhoods, to understand from this piece [12:44:10 PM] to here and the comparison between today versus car versus future transit. Hopefully that gives you a little context. >> Mayor pro tem Garza and then councilmember Flannigan. >> This is actually about the public input. I saw a district 2 location, but I didn't realize it was basically the furthest western of the districts. Soiled just ask the staff to try to find something in southeast Austin. Thanks. >> My recollection is that the estimated trip length wasn't in the presentation from October. That there was -- I don't know that we were sent those digitally for me to pull up right now, but I remember seeing in that really thick binder we got at that convention center center meeting that there was expected trip length on all the lines, however it was proposed back then. And I guess kind of to your point about how open and transparent this process has been, a lot of questions I find myself thinking of actually I already have answers from six months ago. [12:45:11 PM] >> Thank you. Any others? Just quickly. And president Clarke and Brian, I'll just ask you to underscore the thought process behind rail versus bus rapid transit. In other words, why not convert from bus rapid transit to rail and the capacity limitations both on a macro scale and to me what's important is how many people you can get through an intersection with bus rapid transit and rail. >> Sure. So in our analysis we used the capacity of about 115 people per bus and about 172 people per light rail train and you saw on the table there we can -- we reasonably push what we call a two bus platoon through an intersection at a time so that allows us that amount of people, so 117 times two through the intersection at a time versus a train, which we can move through more people faster, we can get a three car train or four car [12:46:12 PM] train through that intersection, which is a substantial amount more people associated with moving through that intersection or through that point in time. As far as converting to brt to lrt, it can be done. It is currently being done in a couple of places across the world. Los Angeles is also currently looking at converting a bus rapid transit lane to a light rail line, however, there are some things associated with that. One is in probably the largest as a transit operator is inconveniencing your current customers that are along that line in order to convert it into the future. So it is not an easy process. It is something that would take a lot of time. There's a lot of costs that would be associated with that. So the recommendation today is to go ahead and future proof the system by making an investment in light rail to get that through those intersections in what we anticipate to be very high [12:47:12 PM] ridership and the continued high growth of this area of Austin. >> And Brian, following you up on conversations we've had, those are the two 60-foot bendy buses. >> Those are the 60-foot buses, they kind of move together through the intersection together called platooning through the intersection, so we can get them through. >> Thank you. Any other questions for Brian before we move on? Very good. Thanks. Member Stratton. >> So based on what these numbers are showing, if we went had -- if we went with brt, by the time the system is is built out and ready to go, our capacity, which my understanding capacity equals our supply, would not meet what the expected demand would be, which is that 68,000. So that is why then the staff is recommending at bare minimum some form of [12:48:15 PM] light rail because each if we didn't decide to go with the tunnel we could at least do the three cards and get to the 73,000, but you guys go digging a little deeper in that both literally and figuratively in a tunnel here. If we're trying to get to 2040 that's one thing, but if we want to go able to go beyond that, that's when these other things come into factor like going under ground, giving us the opportunity to add that extra car. We won't have to come back and have another discussion about cost, associated factors, building out again and those kinds of things. So this that you've got right here, you factored all of this in to get us even beyond just the 2040 time frame? >> That's correct. One of our tenants was to future proof the system and [12:49:15 PM] that's part of the calculation of future proofing the system is what mode will handle the anticipated ridership and give us the capacity to move forward. And then the Orange and blue lines, that is light rail. >> Okay, thank you. >> Other questions? Very good. >> All right. Thanks, everyone. My name is meg merit and I work on the Orange and blue line primarily, but as we all come together and start to look at this holistically as a system, we thought it would be important to talk to you guys a little bit about how we move from what I like to call the 2d, the maps, into the 3D and what would these places like like. If project connect can come to fruition as we have all envisioned. The important thing that we want to remember while we look at these renderings and mean of you saw some of these over the weekend on the internet, is that these are not meant to be [12:50:16 PM] prescriptive, but rather imaginary or envisioning exercise and what is the art of the possible. And I'll tell you, I work with transit agencies all around the country and this is a very big theme is to take the investments that transit agencies are doing and looking at them as holistic. What are their things that we can do to capture a sense of place, make the transit journey more inviting and additionally protect our investment so that that ridership support is there in the long-term. So we'll talk about these images and really two parts of the journey. So the first part of the journey is how we experience our travel on transit. And many of us are familiar with that, but as we start to look at high capacity transit, a big part of that, including the travel time savings that is going to help folks make a decision every morning, do I drive or [12:51:17 PM] do I take transit, is to make that trip more inviting by making the place that they start their journey more inviting. If you've ever been on a rocky flight, but had a really nice airport experience, that can sort of change it. And similarly we hope that if folks have a really smooth transit journey, they are all the more enticed to take transit because their welcoming environment on the way there was great. So this first example is really just a vision of what a park in ride could be. We've got all types of multi-modal features here. There are places obviously that you could charge a bike, doc your scooter. People in the neighborhood come and charge their car or charge it while on their way to work. And if we keep moving we see what a park and ride could [12:52:18 PM] look like for pickup dropoff. So there are several features here. We have it all the time that having restrooms available would be a nice feature, make the wayfinding and tickets access really easy. Having information available to folks. And it wouldn't be Austin if we didn't have coffee and tacos, right? So that's another thing that provides an opportunity for the transit journey to really cater to the creature comforts that we really like on our commute, especially breakfast tacos, and make it a place that is very natural for folks to come together and be a part of the community. I saw on Twitter this really great saying that -- or anecdote that someone provided that they ran into the driver of the red line [12:53:19 PM] vehicle while at the downtown station and doesn't know why, but it made them happy. Well, that's the sense of community that transit can bring is recognizing those faces over and over as part of your transit journey and meeting new people. And then we want to talk about what a regional transit center could look like. So this is really the whole enchilada. These are places where multiple lines converge. There's a very cool opportunity here for placemaking, additional capacity for park and rides through perhaps doing a garage. There's an interesting opportunity to make it a place for our inner city regional buses. You can imagine that capital metro would partner with some of the mega bus and vonn lane types of the world that when folks get to Austin they want to be able to get out and about in Austin. Mixed use opportunities, shade structures are a [12:54:19 PM] hugely important thing in Austin. And of course seamless access to transit. So we will also include wayfinding in the way that we talk about transit, but an inviting transit place actually has natural wayfinding. You can easily find where the transit vehicles are and directional signage about the routes. So let's go to the second part of the transit journey and that is the vehicles. So we're familiar in Austin with rail through our commuter rail, but this vehicle on the left is more urban of a vehicle than we're used to seeing on a computer line. So it's slightly smaller than a commuter train, but it also has the ability as Brian was talking about for coupling. So up to three to four vehicles can be coupled together. Obviously one of the assets that light rail brings is electrification and it's zero emissions, but we're hoping that through the [12:55:20 PM] investment in project connect that looking at the entire fleet of project connect vehicles, including bus rapid transit, would also be an opportunity to move into zero emissions electric vehicles. We're going to talk a little bit about the inside of that vehicle, and I laugh because this is a sneak peek into what it would look like empty because it will never be empty. But we see that in the inside of a light rail vehicle obviously a place for bike racks. That is a hugely important part of the first mile, last mile trip to transit is the ability to ride a bike to transit. And all of the other multi-modal aspects that we were talking about earlier. Digital information center, so people who are first time transit users take a lot of comfort in being able to see all the information about their trip journey front and center so that would be certainly an inclusion. [12:56:21 PM] And I'm going to pause and say that, again, this is something that is an envisioning exercise, but later on capital metro will have the ability to specify to manufacturers in the bid process what it is exactly they would like to see on these vehicles. And these are just some of the early concepts we've heard from the last year in public outreach of the things that the community really finds important, multiple door boarding. That is to expedite how quickly folks get on and off the vehicle. Climate controlled, that's a bullet that's very important here. We want to really talk about that in how folks want to get around downtown Austin, people often see the heat as a barrier, but this will be the coolest place in town. Comfortable seating. Charging stations, these [12:57:21 PM] have already been very popular. And something that people already love about futuring on capital metro is the free wi-fi. The next would be what the interior of a bus rapid transit vehicle could look like, similar features, slightly smaller vehicle, but the user experience will be very seamless across both. So I'm going to now switch to what some of these vehicles would like like operating -- look like operating on the street. But before I do I just want to mention that we recognize that along the blue line and Orange line corridors, we have vastly different types of section, we all that right-of-way, ranging from 62 feet to up to 120 feet. And so I'm going to show a few bird's eye views of the scenario, but these are not meant to be prescriptive. These are really pictures of what you could envision if we had all options available [12:58:23 PM] to us in any given corridor. What will actually happen is in project development cap metro will work in the community along each segment to customize what will work for that particular right-of-way and cross-section. So the first one I want to show you is the split platform concept. So this is just one example of what a split platform concept looks like. What that means is you have a northbound and southbound southbound or perhaps a eastbound and a westbound on two different sides of the intersection. This can accommodate turning motions, but also what's nice about this is that when capital metro goes through the exercise and has done quite a bit of work already to go through the exercise of station location to be flexible with the needs of the street. In this particular intersection we have the [12:59:23 PM] whole enchilada. We have bike lanes, street trees, auto left lanes, left turn, and that is meant to show that in some sections where there's a quite charge right-of-way there's a lot we can do it showings what being congruent with the asmp would look like. If we put right-of-way to be congruent with goals, it would look something like this which basically accommodates everyone, has something for every mode. And then a center platform concept, if you'll notice in contrast to the one before this where the other platform was on the other side of the street, this is a center platform where both northbound and southbound vehicles stop at the same platform. This is going to be something that in an instance where an intersection had constraints on one side, perhaps you would move the platform to [1:00:25 PM] one side of the intersection or this would be what it would look like if you had a mid-block platform and mid-block station. Okay. This is street level. So we -- this is still new for us in many ways in Austin. We're used to seeing trance it vehicles on the street, but we're not used to seeing that street-level look of light rail. We're really not used to seeing what underground transit would look like for austinites. Let's take a look of what that could look like. So here is a conceptual rendering of republic square station. And I think it's fate that the sun is coming in because -- [laughter] -- We actually have a really cool opportunity for place making and daylighting different parts and making the lighting in our underground stations feel very safe and comfortable. So this is something that you could envision at our [1:01:25 PM] republic square station very, very clear way finding here. I want to point out that in the climate controlled priority, one idea that the team has been kicking around is having doors that actually close, both for safety but also for climate control, in addition to what you would see on the vehicles. So you've probably seen this at airports where there's both platform doors and vehicle doors that are synced together so that's something we would envision here. And then if you imagine you are walking around this place and you walk up that staircase there, this is a mezzanine of an underground station. So underground stations typically have many levels. Many opportunities for concession and vendors. And what I love about this picture is you can see that there is airport -- so no matter where you are coming from in the city or going to in the city, your east-west, [1:02:28 PM] northbound, southbound trip becomes very, very clear. And this is where everything in our city kind of converges. So as we talk about core connectivity downtown, there are transit trips that benefit from this even on the outside of town that are coming into the core of downtown. And it will be pretty clear for everybody. I love also about this is that we have the opportunity to make it ours, make it very austiny. We've all been to airports around the world and country and for some reason whenever you land at the Austin airport, it feels like Austin, right? There's just -- kudos to those who work at abia. Similarly, we can make an underground station very ours. Very much ours. It could have all the best things about Austin that we love including live music. You know, we could have [1:03:29 PM] local vendors and it would have an energy that is just like landing at abia it feels very austiny. So I want us to get excited about this as we think about not just the 2d lines on the map, but the community making that transit station -- give us an opportunity to do. So as we think about this investment and protecting our investment, looking at this part of it is also a key component of the program. >> Thanks, meg. Questions for meg? Member Stratton. >> Under these scenarios with the subway, the downtown transit tunnel and the stations that you've laid out here or for that matter with the scenarios at the park and rides where we've got -- you have proposed that we have vendors there for food or flowers or other things like [1:04:29 PM] that, would you perceive that would be opportunities for capital metro to lease that space out and perhaps become a revenue generation source in addition to help perhaps capital metro for maintenance and operations for the continued use of the tunnel, the facilities and that such as well as for, you know, just the aesthetics of it all? >> Yeah, there is possibilities on revenue opportunities that many cities around the country are looking at to really make the most of that real estate. Yes, there's revenue opportunity. No one on the team has quite modeled what that could look like yet. Do you have anything to add to that, Randy? >> No, I think it's currently a consideration going forward. I think everyone should be conscious, I think this is a significant revenue source. The idea of these things generally outside of maybe a Hong Kong or those types of cities, they do generate a significant amount of money. [1:05:29 PM] But for the size and structure we're talking about, I think if we can generate enough revenue to look after maintenance of the station, those kinds of things could be really valuable. Stations like this will need staffing 24/7, cleaning, security, et cetera, so using the retail to activate the space is the most important. Getting the community value, public art, way finding, all of that. And then if we can off set costs to run it, I think it would be a fantastic model. If there's more, great, but it's not going to be one of the main factors in a finance model, that's for sure. >> Councilmember tovo. >> Thank you very much. This is really exciting to see these renderings. I wondered if you had any examples of cities that had successfully set targets for local businesses to be at their stations. >> I don't have any offhand, but I'm sure they are out there and we can find them for you. The transportation research board, which is a national sort of think tank that [1:06:31 PM] aggregates best case studies of different cities, probably has something on this so we can look that up. That's the nice thing about starting where we are is that we can be prescriptive and you all as policy makers can help set those targets. The advantage of doing things -- okay, we're going back in the tunnel. The advantage of doing these things, you know, a little bit behind some of our peer cities is that we can learn from the best practices of what -- that have worked well for them. And I imagine retail at transit stations is something that we could probably learn from. >> Tovo: Thanks. Remind he moo the name. >> Transportation research board. >> Tovo: Thank you. I would like to see us move forward in that direction of really thinking about what those requirements look like to really make sure that we end up with local businesses in the stations. >> We can get you some -- we can take a look at what research is out there. >> Tovo: Thank you. >> Other questions for meg? [1:07:33 PM] Mayor pro tem. >> Garza: Also say these are really exciting renderings. I would just ask as we continue to have these visions to make sure including like family-friendly amenities in the stations. I like that there's kiddos in these pictures, but I wish my daughter would just stand there and watch music. Something tells me she is going to want to do something else. And if we want to continue to be this family-friendly city, in traveling I've noticed in other countries do it way better than the United States does it. So if we can think about that as we continue this visioning exercise. >> Yeah. And that is a key part of folks in wheelchr or with strollers in accessing an underground station, they have to feel that there is no barrier. So that means redundancy in elevators and escalators and things like that. An eye towards that planning I can assure you will happen as long as this parent is on the team. [1:08:35 PM] >> Councilmember alter. >> Alter: Thank you. I just wanted to ask when we would see potential renderings for when we have a smaller runway of 62 feet as opposed to the 100 and some feet that allows us to do everything. Because we're going to have to make some trade-offs and decisions and I think it would be helpful to visualize those scenarios as well. >> Yeah, the short answer to your question is project development, and Brian, maybe you can elaborate on that. >> So this phase is obviously the phase of building consensus developing the program. As we move into next phase of project development, there will be a lot of conversations about the trade-offs associated with that. And we'll have to develop similar visualizations to show those trade-offs, there's a whole project developing phase that will be coming quickly after the recommended plan that will [1:09:35 PM] start to lay out those conversations and those trade-offs. >> Alter: Would those conversations happen before or after a vote in the fall? >> Oh, I think we're at a minimum next summer and probably a good seven, eight, ten months after that before they kind of get locked in. We should remind everyone we feel incredibly good about our ridership model and costs methodology, but we are still in the conceptual engineering and design process. I know some people want to say what does this block look like, we are nowhere near that at this point. So the idea is, as Brian explained, to go through project analysis and then project development. And working incredibly close with each corridor, with each neighborhood, with small businesses. Some of it is flood plain based. Some of it is to do with intersections. Some of it is to do with traffic else a. Some of it is geological [1:10:36 PM] features, other things. So we are certainly at least a year probably from having really good cross-sections to that level that are kind of more corridor specific. >> Alter: And I guess I wasn't really asking for corridor specific, but to the extent you know you have a space that's smaller, one of the fears that I hear most from people is what happens when we have the space that's smaller. And so having some example of a rendering of what this might look like in those circumstances, not on every block in all that way, I think this provides a more transparent response to folks who have that concern and helps us as we're navigating it that we're not just giving and it's not the Cadillac because you wouldn't use that for transit, but it's not the fanciest version, but this is a version we could be happy with and live with and it's going to get us the transit and this is what that might look like in that situation. By its absence, we're [1:11:36 PM] leaving open conversations that we don't get to inform with our knowledge about how transit can be done in that smaller space. >> Sure, great point. So, you know, we go phase by phase and we'll be working on as many of those as possible. I think the key everyone has to be aware of, it's not just getting transit, it's that transit actually works to the best level. To some person there will be a Cadillac on transit and another person a Cadillac -- to not taking right-of-way. Everything I would say as a continuum between cost and outcome. So we could have the -- the lowest performing, least efficient form of transit on the corridor that might actually end up costing less. We might have to buy right-of-way which then we could make it good for all users. It's going to be that trade-off between do we need 18 feet on a right-of-way and all of a sudden that [1:12:36 PM] allows everything to look and feel the same for customers and cars versus transit. Other places it might make sense from a traffic impact analysis. It's the whole system piece coming together. Your point is valid. We have a fair amount of stuff we've started. I want to be as trance parent as possible, -- transparent, it's a lot of process to get through. >> Alter: I just think we should strive to provide some of the basic information and being able to say it's going to be designed for the different spaces is fine, but the absence of an example with a smaller right- of-way doesn't even foreshadow for us the choices that we're going to have to be making and we're going to have to be making some of those choices when we move forward with how much we're bonding because we're going to have to decide how much right-of-way we're going to be buying. And some of those trade-offs we're going to have to be implicitly thinking about. >> We have materials developed used in the [1:13:37 PM] community process to get to this point. Some of those might help answers some of the questions so maybe we'll get the team to stop by and talk to you about those. I think some of the stuff might get on P -- get to what you were getting at. >> Alter: It may be. Member Mitchell. >> This just a question for Randy and the team and I'm making an assumption, but I want to make sure that I'm correct. At buildout this is going to carry 250, 260, 70,000 people, but is that it? If Austin continues to grow, is this the framework that can grow in the future and beyond that? >> So depending on the decision that's made, but the system plan that we have recommended here is is what I would say is a multi-generational investment. Between the light rail recommendation, all the other system elements including beefing up and increasing the metro rapid service that you currently [1:14:38 PM] have and experience today with seven new routes, a downtown transit tunnel that allows reliability and expandability of the system out there, I think this will grow -- be able to grow as Austin grows the system. You may not need four-car trains at the beginning, but you have the ability to go to four-car trains in the future. I think we're recommending the most flexible system we could give you for the growth that's anticipated here in the Austin region. >> Other questions? Meg, I just want to be clear, the diagrams that you are showing here relate to the opportunity to build underground stations in downtown and I think there's maybe one possibly at the convention center one in the vicinity of republic park. And then maybe another one at the north end of the proposed tunnel where it comes out or towards -- I guess it would be Guadalupe. So just a point to be made about that, there's a lot of [1:15:39 PM] opportunity in the development world on the surface level at being able to connect multi-use buildings with these stations, which to me having visited places like New York City and Boston and Brooklyn, even Dallas, you see the streetscape and the surrounding streetscape being able to take advantage of the activity that these stations bring. I know in Dallas the Dr. Pepper station is a really good example of redevelopment in an old site and even some of the hotels in the opposite end of downtown became convention center hotels because they had really one-stop, two-stop access to the convention center. So it really reinvigorated because of the amenities that you are foreshadowing here. >> That's right. And this is really focused on what that area around [1:16:41 PM] republic square could look like. The interesting thing about tunnel and you probably know this is that there are many choices that the city and capital metro can make about where the -- where you daylight different corners so you can have up to four corners, up to eight depending how you choose to link into the city grid on the surface. There's a lot of flexibility there, yes. >> Well, the other thing I would just note about that is the development community is excited about those locations already, and if we make the commitment in the upcoming months, they will be able to take into account these opportunities and I think design and develop their buildings to maximize the use of this space and the surrounding space. Whereas if we wait five years, that opportunity will be lost. >> Yeah. >> Other questions for meg before we move on? [1:17:42 PM] Very good. I think Greg, you are next. >> Thank you, chair. Greg canally with city of Austin finance. Myself and reinet and Brian is going to join us in this finance conversation, I don't know if you knew that. Really what we're going to talk about is integration of the project and the sequencing and how it all has to work together hand in hand and really that's what we've been doing over this last several months is the teams have been together trying to sort out scenarios to get us to this point today. And we're here just to reiterate, we said in January we're here as a result of council and board policy direction. Cap metro board approved the vision plan in December of '18. The city council followed that up -- the city council followed up that by adopting the Austin strategic mobility plan which included the goal of 50/50 mode split and that the city should supreme court the creation [1:18:44 PM] of that high capacity transit system. As I've learned, supporting transit really is the best way, the most single action to move this forward in getting to that mode share. This past September city council passed a resolution more specifically really to go off and kind of formally begin the collaboration with cap metro and their staff for ways for the city to financially support a interact with cap metro to come back with some scenarios about how we could support this project connect system overall vision plan. We're going to walk through where we've landed on today, dive a little deeper on some of the thoughts we had put on paper back in January and continue to talk about this and how it inter relates to the sequencing and overall the governance. I think reinet is going to take us back. >> Good afternoon, I'm reinet marneweck, CEO of capital metro. [1:19:45 PM] We've worked extensively on building a first draft of the model that puts together revenue sources with the planned expenditures of the system. It's very important that we generate adequate funding for the system to ensure the sustainability of the system. We also need to be able to fund all aspects of this program and not just the capital cost of the program, which is substantial, but also the operating and maintenance cost that will be an ongoing annual cost for the system. The capital repair and replacement cost that is significant with vehicles having end of life replacement scheduled. Also the required operating reserves and debt reserves that will be required. So not just for sustainability, but also for the federal transit administration we need to be able to demonstrate that we have adequate funding, that the funding is committed and approved, and that it will [1:20:45 PM] also withstand stress testing for unplanned occurrences like recessions. So first looking at the capital metro slide, this is a unique opportunity for us to obtain federal investment dollars to improve our local infrastructure. And capital metro is the federal transit administration's grantee in the area. And capital metro meets the technical and the financial requirements for grant recipients. We estimate that federal grants can contribute an average of 40% of the capital costs of the program. Capital metro has set aside one-time funding in a capital expansion fund and we project to have between 60 and 70 million available in that fund by 2022. Capital metro has also been funding the project connect efforts since 2016 with 56 million programmed over the period from 2016 through [1:21:48 PM] to 2022 to fund the system planning that has occurred, to get us to where we are now in defining a locally preferred alternative, and then also to start project development. And then most importantly on an annual recurring basis, we estimate that capital metro can contribute between 61 to $100 million per year for the operating costs of the system. And that will be funding through existing sales taxes, fare box -- fares received through the fare boxes of the new system, and then also park and ride fees. And I'll hand it back to Greg to talk more about the city finances. >> Thanks, reinet. As we talked about in January, we discussed several options, several different funding schemes to get at the heart of the council resolution in terms of partnering with the [1:22:48 PM] financial -- financially partnering with capital metro. We wanted to kind of do a deep dive today on the idea of a transit referendum. What it would look at is the idea of having a dedicated revenue stream, which is what we've seen around the country as other entities go forward with the referendums, they are crafted around the idea of dedicated revenue streams over time in order to meet the criteria that reinet had laid out. So what would be the idea around this just to do a deeper dive that we did not do in January. Approving an action take rate that includes revenue above a 3.5% revenue growth. As we know, senate bill 2 and the new state law around local property taxes, it was not construed as a cap but just as a point above which requirement to go back to the voters. So annually each year city of Austin revenue can come [1:23:49 PM] in 3.5% and above that requires mandatory vote. In this idea it would be going to having a mandatory vote and having the investments dedicated toward the project connect investments. When we look at this from a financial perspective and also technical perspective, it does neat the fta local criteria and goes through all the check boxes between capital, operations and maintenance, capital repair funds and then reserves which are really critical as we go through investing in such a large effort. It also allows us to maximize all the federal funding opportunities. We've talked about the capital improvement program or new starts, but there's other federal programs, low interest federal programs we would want to leverage and get the funds as well with the goal of maximizing those and also trying to limit the local cost as much as we can for the taxpayers. So taking that work and that [1:24:50 PM] construct, in the fall cap metro staff and city staff were working as the costs continued to get developed, and what we did at the beginning of the year, we've hired an independent financial consultant. We this the that I was really critical to bring in someone from outside that could look at all our work and assess it and bring it into an integrated cost model. When we do sit down with the federal transit administration, it's important the model is an F Ta compliant model. So doing that work now really gets us to get ahead of that work when we sit down with them as we move forward. What we're looking at -- excuse me. What we're looking at in terms of the scenarios we have been able to look at from a preliminary perspective, what they are really looking at is different sequencing of the program, of the project connect program that Brian had laid out. He's going to go through more detail on the sequencing, but what is [1:25:52 PM] common to you will a of them is all the project connect elements that are in that page can be accomplished under the scenarios that we've run at this point. What the difference is the year the duration to build that out once we get into the federal process from 15 years up to 30 years. And also each of those -- each of those scenarios then drive that decision around sequencing drive the additional tax rate we would need in year one. Scenario a, between 12-point a 5 and 13.5 cents and scenario D, which does not have the downtown tunnel, is at the lower end. Wee also included on this, we know this is a really critical discussion for the community as we go through this -- continue to go through planning efforts is looking what that tax impact would be for a median tax bill so we've laid that out here as well. What we want to do is focus as just the discussion topic looking at scenario C. Brian and Dave and the team have been able to put a sequencing plan we think really adheres to where we [1:26:53 PM] want to be in terms of getting as much project done as we can. What I'll say again, these preliminary scenarios, our goal now that we're in a steady state on assumptions is over next month finalize this work and like we've done on other elements of project connect is get a white paper out around all of this program and project financing. The details and the assumptions, we think that's really important. Hopefully the next month our goal is to complete that and get that out there for the public. So I'll turn it back over to Brian and he can go through some of the sequencing that is behind scenario C. >> So thank you, Greg. A series of cost elements. You can see we're anticipating an estimate of the Orange blue including the downtown tunnel and the gold lines about $7.9 billion. Metro rapid, we budgeted 170 million for those [1:27:53 PM] improvements. The metro rail green line, 510 million. And the melt tremendous rail red, 445 million. Expansion of the metro express and park ride 200 million. Additional neighboood circulators of 3 million. Remaining facility improvements is part of the program at 300 million to support the expansion of the fleet associated with the project connect program. And then the additional enhancements to the fare collection system, bringing us to a total with the high capacity transit plus other system elements of around $9.6 billion. Take out the federal share and the $200 million for future projects out in the future of 200 million brings us to a recommended local commitment need of about $5.6 billion. So how does that all lay out in time then? So you can see we would start in earnest on the Orange and blue line here, [1:28:55 PM] as we continue with our project development and into our next phases, but the Orange line extensions on the north and south would be done in years 24 and 30. So out there a little. And then red line, commuter rail we would do the first Nepa and preliminary engineering in our first phase, which is station improvements, but then later phase in years 11 and 15 with the larger improvements associated with the red line. The green line commuter rail improvements, we continue in preliminary engineering in the next few years, but actually not construct and move that program out until years 9 and 13 of the program. And then with metro rapid, we looked at a stepped implementation bringing those on board in different phases. Don't know exactly what those phases are yet, but just stepping those out through a couple three-year tranches associated with that. [1:29:55 PM] And then a continuum of mark and rides, metro bus and access and improved customer tack. This is the schedule and the rhythm of the projects that we looked at. Another thing to take into consideration when you are sequencing projects is our partners. And our partner being the federal transit administration in a lot of this. It has been our experience across multitude of projects that it is fairly abnormal for a program to be in with the federal transit administration on four, five or six projects at the same time, so they like to see you work your way through the process, so we've tried to stage those federal commitments as much as possible as part of this program. With that, Gina. >> Thank you, assistant city manager. We've already heard that project connect will take place all around the city, but what's happening now is that there's a high degree of program integration and [1:30:57 PM] coordination that's already taking place. We know that transit oriented development and preserving affordable housing and anti-displacement opportunities is key to our philosophy at the city. And we know that as we look at these opportunities, additional opportunities will continue to evolve throughout the design process. Some of our public initiatives that are taking place that are complimentary to project connect and our buildout of transit opportunities are, of course, the expansion of the Austin aren't. We have a robust 2040 expansion plan that's already underway. Basically telling us that our capacity at the airport will double over the course of that time frame, and it's interesting to note that the pace of expansion at the airport is roughly the pace of expansion that you've seen here in Austin with transit between 8 and 9% per year. So all of this additional integration will further our [1:31:57 PM] collective policy objectives, and the city team is working hand in hand with capital metro, but also with our utilities. Austin water and Austin energy have been great partners with us throughout this entire process and in fact sit on some of our engineering review teams. So what does this all mean for what is already in the pipeline for active transportation investments? Well, first of all I have to recognize the outstanding work of my colleagues in the mobility cabinet that are advancing all of what you see here before you. The public works department, the transportation department, and, of course, the corridor program office. They are doing absolutely amazing work advancing $137 million of investments all along our corridors. 90 miles of sidewalk creating that connectivity which is roughly just shy of the distance between Austin and Waco when you think of that and how significant [1:33:00 PM] it's. And 72 miles of bike lanes that are worth $46 million of investment. And that distance is really just shy of the distance between Austin and San Antonio. If you add it up all, it's really transformative. So each of these investments are significant and impactful on their own, but when you take them collectively, nearly $200 million that we're advancing within our own city, they are truly transformative. So that allows us to develop the framework for the cooperation that we've already seen within our own city departments and with our partners. Particularly some of you have been at the table with us with our corridor program office. You've been out on coffee on the corridor, you've been at community meetings and you've seen how we've been able to work together with state partners, with our own other city agencies to really make these [1:34:01 PM] investments worthwhile opportunities we would like to see in our city. >> And just to follow up on Gina is talking about the partnerships we have looking forward, we've talked about this -- we put this out there in January the idea of how a new joint venture could work between capital metro and the city of Austin. We've added a little more detail around it. The idea that there are funding entities and that would be the city, again through this idea of looking at our tax rate, and then also capital metro bringing the funding that reinet talked about including the federal funds. The funding then leads into the governancend implementation of the project connect system and the recommendation that's been laid out today. Using a local government corporation, and that independent corporation would be focused on governor in answer and financing and planning and implementation bringing back to the areas continuing integration and [1:35:01 PM] coordination amongst not won't policy areas but just the detail on the ground. And finally moving forward as built and once built, capital metro then would be operating the assets that would be built under this project connect system. So with that, we've been thinking about moving forward on putting some more information around that, but really laying out a set of guiding principles. Part of the conversation that we had in January, I think key to continuing the idea of transparency that has been really at play since the beginning of cap met throw starting this project connect effort, we look at this being a single entity vested with the authority and rigger to complete and get this work done. It would be an independent board. However, it's critical that city council and the capital metro board will continue to have broad oversight over the overall programming with the idea that each entity would be contributing funding into this. And so that is really a key element to those principles. And then really down at a [1:36:01 PM] level of making sure that we can get it done is the idea of having a joint program staffing office to be focused on having this. What we've done is we've engaged a consultant to present a framework around there a they are going to be in town I believe starting in April, having conversations to make sure that as this gets set up aen the framework that is put back in front of the city council and the capital metro boarded a here's to the needs each of the boards will have moving forward. So we intend to have that work completed by may and back in front of you to continue to fill out this idea of what this joint venture needs to look like for the community. >> Why don't we pause and see if anyone has questions. That was a lot of information. Councilmember Flannigan. >> Flannigan: Just to be really clear on the slide that had the cost options, that first line says years [1:37:03 PM] to build out. But that's not years to opening the first segment. It's not construction for 30 years and 30 years later magically you have a solution, right? The other slide gets there with the arrows, but can you talk specifically so it's clear how many years would it be for the first major investment to open? >> Yes, councilmember. As you can see there, it takes eight to nine years for an investment such as the Orange line, the blue line that we're looking at. So you can anticipate sometime around 2028-type opening associated with an Orange or blue line investment. But staggered in there are opening of more rapid lines, a continued better bus through the program. So you will see these staged improvements while we build up to the large investment and improvements associated with the Orange and blue line in around the 2028-2029 [1:38:04 PM] time frame. >> Flannigan: It's important to note we're not asking in a transit referendum to wait for 30 years to see something or even wait ten years to see something. You are going to see some return on investment as a taxpayer pretty quickly. Also to that point, you know, we do this thing, go back to the slide with the four tax options on it. We have often done this thing where we have this estimated impact line, and it talks often about this median taxable home, but we also know in Austin we're more than half renters. So it's not really the median taxpayer. So I don't know how we get to better examples for the public, but less than half the people are going to be paying that much in this concept. It's much more -- there are many more different levels of people who are going to experience this impact and as a renter myself, there's not a one to one as I have come to learn and appreciate, there's not a one to one impact on your rent based on every budget [1:39:05 PM] the city council passes. So it's much more complicated than this and I would hate to see a head line that says everyone will have to pay X in order to do this when it's really not going to be the case. It's much more complicated than that. I went back and found the presentation from October for the travel time, and it shows end to end on the Orange line is 42 minutes. And that would be a trip very few people would actually take because you wouldn't actually go the entire length of the Orange line, so it would be roughly half that to get from the northern terminus to downtown. Is that a fair way to lay that out, Randy? >> The team has referenced the document on our website. Tech ridge to slaughter, and no one would generally speaking make the entire line. Estimated one hour 20 minutes in car during rush hour, the Orange line 54 minutes. We don't think many people would make the entire line. Tech ridge to republic square, one hour in a car, 33 minutes on the train. [1:40:06 PM] And south congress transit center example to U.T. Would be 33 minutes in a car, 25 minutes on the Orange line. And the airport to downtown rush hour in a car 45 minutes on the blue line train 22 minutes. So half the time to take a train from the airport to downtown would be P.M. Rush hour. >> And Randy, when we were looking up the auto travel time trips, that is in 2020. So you know, we always say your car commute today is the best one you'll ever have. So that is -- that is -- could potentially be higher in 2028. >> Councilmember kitchen. >> Kitchen: I wanted to ask a few more questions about this. So one thing that I think -- thank you, councilmember Flannigan, it does point out that we'll see investments really pretty soon. So -- but I also wanted to [1:41:07 PM] say the other thing it tells me is that we're seeing early and relatively soon investments across all the different aspects of the vision. So the concept being, as we've talked about before, that this vision plan is something that is designed to address all parts of town. And for people that live throughout the city. So I think that's important. So with that said, I have a question, and it may be a question about when will we know this, but so we have a line for metro bus and met throw access. -- Metro access. I think it will be important whenever that right time is the public can understand what we're thinking of in terms of improvements to our bus system. Related to that too is the metro rapid, the phase 1, phase 2, phase 3. It would be important to understand what the thinking is on the priorities for those -- for those lines. [1:42:08 PM] Because I think that that will help the public see that we are talking about relatively near-term relative humidities for all parts of town -- results for all parts of town. Do we have a time line in mind where we might provide more information about both the bus improvements and the metro rapid? When is the appropriate time to have those understandings for folks? >> I'll jump in with a quick comment, and Brian -- so between now and may we'll provide for granulater around pieces on the sequencing. When it says met throw bus and access, there's components in the long-range capital plan and really that focuses on a lot of things like amenities. Benches, shelters, solar lighting, better security, things of that nature that you as a board member have been approving and we would like to just continue to [1:43:09 PM] accelerate and do more of that. Metro access in our long-range financial plan, X amount of growth set aside for the assumption as our service network changes, we will have to provide -- and our population grows, especially if our elderly population grows, we could provide that extra service as this system gets larger. Part of this is trying to explain how the whole system works together, parts a, long range plan that's either not in there relative to infrastructure and actual investments. >> Kitchen: That's very helpful. I think showing, having a place where people can see at the same time we're talking about this where peek can see what we're talking about in terms of those improvements will help people see and trust that we are talking about improvements for all parts of town. So that will be helpful when you get to that point to actually provide some more detail around that. >> And in tab 3, maybe [1:44:10 PM] something we could have mentioned earlier was a fact sheet, if you will, for each one of these elements. You will see one for metro access and gives some examples. One of the things I think you are hitting on is we want to be very clear, this is a transit system expansion across all modes so it's more bus, more express, more rail, more commuter rail, more stations, more park and rides, more neighborhood circulatedders, more shelters, for customer technology. It is a comprehensive citywide transit expansion. >> Kitchen: Okay. I have a few more questions, but I'll let others go first. >> Board member Stratton and then councilmember pool and then commitment -- commissioner Travillion. >> Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First of all, thank you, councilmember Flannigan. I was thinking those same things because I saw extension and was trying to [1:45:11 PM] follow along, years 24 to 30, what are we getting. But this is encouraging to see because, again, some things I've heard in the community is wait a minute, we're paying for this now but not seeing anything until 2040, 2050, that's encouraging we could see sees improvements, the big capital, the nearly $10 billion investment, the Orange and blue lines as soon within the -- nine years, eight to nine years. My question resolved then around the red line, which is being in Williamson county, that's one of the things that's near and dear to us in addition to the metro express buses. I see there we've got the improvements that looks like there's a phase-in project within the first three years we've got some improvements and I'm fairly familiar with that, that we're talking about improving -- that goes down to as part of the already existing part of the do you want station. [1:46:12 PM] I know long term improved double tracking to improve reliability, allow for more running of the train. I'm curious what the plan then, when we see a phase 2 11 to 15, what's built into that that we're looking at then? >> Some additional double tracking to support increased frequency of service, some additional rail car buys to support increased ridership, and then a facility to help support the increase in that commuter rail group. >> Okay. Thank you. Then looking back again at slide 27, the funding scenarios, the one other thing that I was curious about, it says there on your third row it talks about additional tax rate in year one. My question, and this is probably for Mr. Canally, is we're looking at with model C that we're costing out here and using as kind of the example for all of this [1:47:12 PM] information, year one, nine to ten cents. What are we looking at then would be the impact in year 3, year 5, year 7. And then kind of a follow-up along with that, I know living in Williamson county we have one line item that says Williamson county taxes, and then immediately below that there's a second line item that says Williamson county roads. And that's the amount that is specifically line itemed out that we as Williamson county residents pay for our road bonds. And my question is will this be tracked as a separate line item on our -- if the voters pass this, would that be tracked as a separate line item on property taxes so that out of full transparency, so city residents can see this is what they bought, what they bought? >> Certainly. That's a great question. I think -- the first [1:48:12 PM] question around the tax rate. This is initial, as you said. We have to make projections about the future in terms of overall assessed valuation growth. What I think is sensible to think about that over time as the city of Austin tax pace continues to grow even under conservative estimates that we typically take, we think we would naturally think about the city's overall tax rate would start coming down slightly as would this piece of that over time. The exact numbers we don't know. As we work through our upcoming budget process and do this white paper on finances, we're going to try to wrap that all together. But as the big picture as the city continues to grow, values grow, especially as new construction comes on, which is really a value toist city and taxpayers, we would expect it to come down. In terms of how that gets transmitted via tax bill, a lot of folks pay their tax bill via an escrow account, [1:49:12 PM] their bank might help them do that for that share of the population that is doing that. Right now when you get your annual tax bill at least in Travis county from the tax assessor, each of the entities, the taxing jurisdictions are spelled out specifically one for city of Austin, one for Travis county, aid. I don't know that there's an opportunity to split our own individual ones. That's something we can talk about. But generally as a combined overall tax bill somebody is paying when they have their mortgage is is being paid through escrow, it is one overall amount that gets remitted to the city. We don't think it would be like that specifically, but that's a question we could work with the tax assessor to look at. >> I would encourage that. I myself pay escrow, but I still get that bill and can still drill down and see what I'm paying to which entity. I even just went on the Williamson county tack assessor website to look and see based if it was between [1:50:13 PM] nine and ten cents where it would put Austin and Williamson county. I went to the controller's site and other large cities. I realized that's right with Williamson county we break out, and I don't know if this is a state mandated thing or just something the county did, but having this on there so as part of true transparency and also for that matter going forward for future councils too so that everybody is aware and we're all on the same page that this is how much the voters approved, this is what it's for, and everybody who moves into Austin or people who are existing residents of Austin recognize this is what this is for. And for that matter can be tracking it just like you guys are internally that this is it, it was year one it was at, you know, 9.5 cents or whatever. Then by year 5 because of increased property values and more residents moving in, it moved to 9.45 or whatever it is. [1:51:13 PM] I think that would go a long way for moving the ball down the road in terms of increased transparency for what really is going on here. >> I think it's a great question and we'll run that down. I like that language of we certainly will be doing this internally in terms of how we manage each year's budget and tax rate and manage the annual budget process that our city council goes through. And if we can take that and externalize it, I think it's an idea and we'll look through what we're allowed to do and what flexibility in terms of tax bills. >> Especially since this would be a specific and specialized investment that the voters are voting on. >> Thank you, member Stratton. City councilmember pool. >> Pool: Thanks. I had a leading question -- a first question, but based on what this conversation was just now, I wanted to ask a couple of questions. The nine to ten cents, are you saying that that would flex depending on valuations? Because my understanding was [1:52:13 PM] that that was just tax rate would go up by that amount, which is different from what Mr. Stratton is talking about or seems to be saying it would be. >> I think there's -- just a little -- obviously the first year, you know, the community does have experience with this type of refer anadem, central health 2012, and we'll include that information as part of this white paper that we get out. When central health went forward to help support the medical district, medical campus with U.T. And Dell. The first year, this would be additional -- additional revenue associated with that tax rate. The following year that just becomes part of our base revenue each year and part of the tax rate that gets adopted each year. I think in a big picture -- >> Pool: But it doesn change the percentage that goes into the special revenue fund, right? >> Correct. >> Pool: It's still going to be nine to 10 percent of whatever the valuation, which is different than what [1:53:14 PM] Mr. Statistic ton was saying. -- Stratton was saying. The tax rate will flex and go down depending on the valuations increasing. My understanding is opposite what you are saying. >> As we're working on this now, the idea that there is is -- we have to work through our -- as we look at crafting this in more detail as it gets spelled out in a ballot ordinance, the idea is this would represent a proportion of your new general fund operating dollars that are coming in each year. If you have a pie, it would grow and this proportion of that would stay in place over time. In response to the question around the overall tax rate, if we can safely assume that -- if our overall tax base continues to grow as it has in the past, and we again are conservative as we look back over 20 years, 10 years, as we run different scenarios around that, the overall city tax rate, all pieces of the tax rate, we could see that slowly coming down over time. [1:54:15 PM] The proportion of the dollars that would be flowing out of this election that the voters would have would stay consistent coming into the local government corporation. >> Pool: Okay. So you are saying that let's just pick a number. Let's say we got $5 million the first year. That 5 million we would have a dedicated, consistent equal to 5 million every year or would that 5 million increase over time? >> We would then look at state law. State law says revenue can grow 3.5% each year. We would see that 5 million would have the ability to grow 3.5% each year. >> Pool: That's different from what you are saying. Okay. I had another question about if this is a city of Austin and capital metro project acknowledge knowing the city of Austin is in Williamson county, and nothing that cap metro serves other communities besides just the city of Austin and -- in Travis county and Williamson county, what other governmental entities will [1:55:16 PM] be a part of this, if any? Because cap metro has a wider service area. What other entities are you talking to include or is it just city of Austin? >> I'm happy to answer. Greg, fill in if you have something else. What we are bringing back as a joint work session with cap metro and the city are city-based packages. We have service outside the city that we provide service to and have relationships with. There's component of our long-term vision plan that are outside the city of Austin that are not included in these cost estimates and sequence that are things like city express buses to long term in greater vision plan and campo is working on the same thing, express buses to bastrop or Hutto or san~marcos. You will see there's a section of the green line from colony park to manor to Elgin. All of the elements of the city itself are not included in the sequence and in the [1:56:17 PM] cost estimation. It doesn't mean as a region we don't get to want get to all of those, but we didn't want to conflate that with how it's going to look 20, 30 years versus the joint session discussion that's been evolving to say here's the cap metro plan and Greg mentioned there was guidance to city staff to say here are options to be a partner on the transit elements within the city. >> Pool: To go back to page 25 where we have one-time available funds, 60 to 70 million by 2022, I wanted to make sure I understood the source of this share and how much is in that fund today. >> Currently there's 40 million in the fund and we are budgeting to add so million each year and the source of the -- 10 million each year and the source is the sales tax. >> Pool: And that's in cap metro? >> [Inaudible] >> Pool: Thank you so much. >> Commissioner Travillion. [1:57:20 PM] >> I'm going to be interesting in tying in your equity analysis. Because when you go to page 29 and when I look at the sequencing, it seems to me, and maybe I'm wrong, that Orange, blue, red and gold will be built out before we start on green. And so I'm going to be interested in which elements address the equity needs of northeast and southeast Travis county. I'm going to be interested in the specific affordable housing and anti-displacement strategies that were mentioned. I'm going to be interested in how we've begun to address some of the sidewalk plan issues that exist in the northeast corridor because if we're going to provide more and different services and move people from location, so we're making sure that we're addressing the quality of the sidewalks particularly from an Ada standpoint. And then I'll be [1:58:24 PM] interested also in addressing whether or not we have access to the major employers. When the employees leave that corridor going into other parts of the city. >> I guess I can make a quick comment. I think all your comments, board member transformationalvillian, are spot on. There's a lot of background material related to the actual individual lines. Equity analysis is a component to the lpa for the Nepa process. So we can go through that and there are things we've done throughout the community meetings. Maybe on tab 1 that would be helpful, the actual system plan map that highlights how it all comes together, but you will see on the map one of the things that's really important for us in transit to really effectuate all the policies we've talked about, whether it's climate change policies, growing ridership, access to housing, access to education, access to health care, is when you have a [1:59:24 PM] transit system you have to have multi-line stations or multi-route stations that connect. That's what makes the best transit system. On a map like this you'll notice and you brought up, for instance, east or northeast Austin, lots of lines and more importantly lines that connect to each other. So we're seamlessly trying to stitch the entire transportation network together. Related to the phasing, this is really to try to say how -- we have again is time and cost continuum. So we're trying to say how to balance the fta process, how to qualify for those funds, how our technical capacity is to actually deliver the projects and balance out the highest return on investment, so ie relationship gain, how to sequence things against planning. So you will see some things starting and when some planning activities end we start other planning activities. The idea is how do you build a fiscally responsible, I guess, model that would meet the fta [2:00:25 PM] requirements to ensure this would all work, but at the same time with us being able to technically build it. So that's what that's supposed to represent. >> Mayor? >> Again, I appreciate the tremendous amount of work that's gone through this and you've given us and the community a lot to work through here over the next couple of months. My overwhelming thought is I wish we had started this eight years ago so that it would be easier for us all to move around when we left here. >> Just to go back and just touch on the question that councilmember pool asked and that Eric had with respect to how the funding works, if you could check with legal on this to see what allowances we have? I think it's really important that we be really transparent with the public and that we make a commitment and a promise that we aside by and it runs with this whole project through its completion. But just to take a look and [2:01:26 PM] see if what we're looking into is a proportion of the total tax bill or if we're looking into a number of pennies that stay constant or if we're looking into a revenue amount that goes up by three and a half percent. And it could be that so long as we make our promise and a bide by our promise we might be able to pick which one of those we do. In which case you would need to model and come back with us on us. So I don't need for you to address that now, but if you could have legal take a look at that question, I'd appreciate that. >> I think it's great feedback. And it helps us as we kind of evolve to this next round of discussion and we put together some explanatory material around this, how it works and how that can inform you and your decisions and we'll include that. This white paper is becoming something larger than that, but I think it's invaluable to bring that all together. I think they're great questions and we will work with city legal and go through all those and mailbox as you said, model [2:02:26 PM] this out. So we know that there are choices in front of you that you can pick on a go-forward basis. >> Thanks. >> Member kitchen? >> I wanted to follow up a bit on slide number 30. So specifically related to affordable housing and anti- someplace displacement opportunities. And thank you, board member Travillion for highlighting the point about anti-displacement opportunities. I think that our respective bodies, I think the city and the county can also work together to bring to the table the things that we can do with regard to anti- displacement. And to that end we really have some timeline here to work to mitigate any unintended displacement along these lines since we're talking about six, seven years ago before they are actually operational. [2:03:27 PM] So I wanted to let my colleagues know that I'll be bringing forward a resolution for council consideration to look at some opportunities for anti-displacement that we could perhaps accelerate. We're doing a lot already has a city. So this is not new, but I think that there may be some things that we can accelerate. And board member Travillion, traps we could work with you and there are some things that the county would be interested in bringing to the table on that. >> Thank you. Councilmember Casar. >> Thank y'all for all of the hard work. I had three points I wanted to bring up. The first one just on the first reaction again, this has been really thorough work and it's just so impressive to -- and exciting to think about being able to leave downtown during rush hour and then get up to tech ridge in half an hour. Right now it would take an [2:04:29 PM] hour but part of the answer is right now often times I just wouldn't do it. You just don't. And the ability to say we could leave from work and get back home in 20 minutes or leave work and get to a community meeting up north or down south or out east is really impressive and exciting. And that you would know how long it takes is also really important. And you could write an email to work or to your family while sitting on the train is also -- instead of just being frustrated, there's a whole quality of life and mental health component that I think is very important. The second is Mr. Canally, I don't know if in the conversation you got back to the issue of cost in year one versus in later years. Here in a second I would love to hear from you if we continue to see the level of construction downtown that we've seen. And if having mass transit has us getting buildings that have -- instead of 16 [2:05:29 PM] stories of parking, a lot more stories of jobs and offices and residences. My understanding of how this works is that that would significantly -- because that would drive the tax rate downward even if we added nine cents, that would significantly mitigate in later years the actual cost of this per month. So I would love to hear from you on that in a minute. So my sense is that they would actually bring in jobs and housing and better connect people and therefore would actually mitigate the impact to our everyday resident outside in the neighborhoods. And to commissioner Travillion and councilmember kitchen's point I look forward to working on anti-displacement and housing issues and I think it would be really useful if we had a map from cap metro or the city that showed overall where the most low income people per census tract live because while I think that there is obviously an equity component to getting this to all different parts of the [2:06:30 PM] city, I know that along the northern portions of Orange and the eastern portions of blue we have a lot of low income folks and so as we do that equity analysis I would love to see a map so we could see along green, along Orange, along blue, where it is that we have -- obviously we have our own just lived experience, but I think having -- working with folks would be really great on that front. Commissioner canally, I would love to hear if we see continued really large amounts of construction downtown, how that potentially could mitigate the cost to the everyday person. >> And I think it's a really good question and I can answer it in a way that it's -- you guys have seen lots of powerpoints from the time I presented this one, when we were doing the Waterloo greenway project and we talked about what had we seen in the central business district over the last 10 years in terms of the valuations. [2:07:32 PM] The CBD grew almost 300 percent in valuations while the rest of the city grew at 100%. And just accelerated rate of development contributed acknowledge extra 25, $30 million or almost two cents on the tax rate. From a modeling perspective, again going back to this idea of having an independent model that is fta compliant, when we look at growth we're looking at a macro component, not at what's happening downtown. When we sooch loot that growth and half the growth that we've seen, I think we could continue to see the continued acceleration of especially non-single-family commercial paying for a lot of this and then ultimately as well the tax rate would be coming down. The more that growth occurs we're going to see that kind of tax rate come down over the decade. >> I think even if we put together a conservative, but reasonable estimate of what the impact on that growth would be to the estimated [2:08:32 PM] tax bill over some years, that could be useful because if right now what we're communicating to the public is if we expect downtown stops growing then what will be the impact. But we understand that's not the reality that we anticipate. In fact, I would anticipate not only does it grow, that actually having transit access would create incremental amounts of growth and construction. So if we just had a reasonable but conservative impact of where we see downtown and the city headed and the additional construction that we would anticipate if people could actually get on transit, then we might look at a year five or six that is mitigated more than we might be communicating now. >> Again, I think it's a really good question and a way to think about it. And as we now move from this preliminary work and getting to a steady state of the work inputs and thinking about putting more information in front of you, looking at it from different lenses I think it's really important. Now we'll be able to model out different kind of sensitivities around that we'll be able to take that and work on that. [2:09:33 PM] >> I've got mayor pro tem Garza and then councilmember alter. >> My comments are similar in the opportunities to mitigate the monthly estimates. Because there are - - there are families that can take that can add an addition to their budget and it doesn't affect as much as other families. And this is just -- let me be clear, I'm very supportive of us investing as a city. Investing in trait transit is something we have to do. But this would be in addition to del valle I believe just passed a school bond so they'll be seeing possible an increase. If for whatever reason we have to ask for another tax expansion because of public safety issues because of the predicament we're in because [2:10:33 PM] of the legislator's latest actions, all that -- and you know, as part of being on the regional affordability, these resident discussions that we've had there is we talk about these things by themselves and not the cumulative effect of the need obviously to invest in all these different things, but it does create a cumulative effect. So that being said I guess I would ask our staff and our city manager if we can find opportunities to mitigate, and off the top of my head I thought of the transportation fee. If there's a way to be able to tell people we will be reducing the transportation user fee a little bit and that could help mitigate this cost similar to the way we did, the other for example I thought of is if we were trying to get composting funded we provided the option that if you instead moved down to the smaller bin of your trash, that could basically -- there was a cost savings basically. So you weren't adding more because you were adding composting. So if there's opportunities [2:11:37 PM] within our fee structure to mitigate this monthly fee I would ask for us to take a look at that. >> Councilmember alter. >> Thank you. I had an opportunity to talk with Mr. Canally and some of the other folks on our staff. And Mr. Clarke at length about this. And I really appreciate that the tax revenue election is really the only option we have given the state and federal environment that we're in. It has the added bonus of allowing us to pay for operations and maintenance and I appreciate that all of our estimates include the operation and maintenance and are very transparent in that regard. One of the things that I wanted to flag for my colleagues and for capital metro, one of the things we've been talking about is if we hold out the hope that there will be change at the state or the federal level that would see investments in transit as important and be able to provide dollars [2:12:37 PM] behind it, that we have a clear path and a clear commitment with the voters as to how we would be approaching that scenario. So some investments that are relatively small for the state could make a big difference in terms of how this bond plays out over time and would free us to be able to make choices about whether we wanted to accelerate the buildout or if we wanted to reduce the tax. And as we think about how we structure this we talked specifically about having a companion resolution and that resolution being able to be very clear that we have to have a very year funding bath for the fta in order to bring down the federal money so we have to commitment that all else fails and this is the path path and we're committed to do this. But we have to find a way if we can open up some of the federal or state funding or we find some other mechanism that we give ourselves in our communications with the voter that that's sort of [2:13:39 PM] flexibility. And I think that is important. I will just stop the comments about the sense of clarity and the number of dollars and the since it's growing. We are about to move forward with road impact fees. It's my understanding that those are under current state law are not allowed to be used for transit. Is that correct. I believe they can't be used for transit, but that is a state law that can't be changed and we could be assessing those and taking into consideration transit if there were a change at the state level that would allow us to have yet another tool in our toolbox. So I know there's a number of things where we as a city are searching for ways to figure out how to fund this within the constraints that we have. And I think we've landed on [2:14:40 PM] the best choice to fund this if as a community we decide we want to move forward, but we definitely have other funding options and I think we should be planning for those -- some of those factors to be changing over time and be more favorable to the kinds of investments that we're making. >> I want to speak to the street impact fee. My understanding is if it's accurate is if those can be used for improvements -- improvements to how roads function, some of which are the same as you would do to improve how a bus operates on the road. So it can be used to support transit in that sense but cannot be used to pay for buses or other things that are specific to transit. But if there are improvements to a road that improves the flow on the road, often times those [2:15:41 PM] often benefit transit, so I just want to make that clarification. >> Thank you. Councilmember Ellis. >> I really appreciate everybody's hard work on this. I know there's a lot of details to be solidifying so that we can kind of understand what we're getting into as we make these final decisions. I'm glad we're getting into really specific details and I'm glad that it falls in line with a lot of our city approved goals like the asmp, the 50/50 mode shift, things that we have passed as a council regarding climate change and vehicle electrification and things that are really important like that. I think it's also important as the general population is kind of following along and thinking about what this means for them is it's also going to be about the cost of transportation on your family budget. It's one of the highest cost drivers. People may say that putting into a fund like this or a tax referendum is something that yes, you're going to invest and pay ahead before you get to use that [2:16:41 PM] particular feature, but if it had alleviate some of the other cost of the family budget where you're having to maintain your vehicle and the city has to pay to maintain roads and gas is expensive, but there's also an environmental cost to this. So I hope as we're going through these final steps of the process that we really understand what it means to fight climate change, what it means to have responsible transportation and housing policy goals. And so I think that's a really important part of this conversation and we start working through the dollars and sense and what that means for people to really look at the big picture and know what it means for everyone to really know they want to take a step in the right direction. As we stay focused on that I know we'll get together somewhere as a community. >> Thank you, councilmember. Other questions before we move on? Councilmember kitchen. >> I have a question related to the last slide number 32 about the joint venture. [2:17:41 PM] So I'm understanding that the consultant will present the framework by may. I'm assuming -- just clarify for me that the creation of a local government corporation would be something that would have to be clariffied. So if you could clariffied that for folks. And if you can clarify if there's a timeline in mind. My idea would be that this framework be specific enough and in place before we ask the voters to vote in November, but if you could just talk about that aspect of the timeline. >> Councilmember, thank you for that second feedback. That's -- in terms of timeline putting this up here. And in terms of the creation of it, yes. State law allows it to be actually jointly created by the city council and cap metro and that is something that I think would engage with the consultant to walk through that. [2:18:41 PM] Base this has been such a joint venture to continue that co-creation. Ultimately what it is is creating articles of incorporation. So the timeline of that as you talked to the consultant over that, the framework of that, that timeline seems consistent with ability or the timing to set an election in August. >> It just seems to me that for transparency with the public, that it might be important that we be clear and we actually create it. We can have some discussion when that comes back to us about the appropriate timeline, but I just wanted public to understand we are in a path that we could go ahead and create it if the determination is that is important for the public to see. >> Thank you. Other questions, comments before we move on? Councilmember tovo. >> Just two quick questions. One on that front. When you're referring to the consultant is it the same consultant that is working [2:19:43 PM] on the economic development corporation that would be broader in scope? >> No, this is one specific to the creation around this framework for -- that would be project connect focused. >> Thank you. And my second question deals with the park and rides. Has there been any study about the viability of potentially charging for people to be at the park and ride or is the intent to have that be - - >> That is one of the revenue sources that we have on the capital metro slide. I can quickly jump back to that page. We estimated to charge parking at the park and rides with the additional park and rides that will come on line with project connect. And that estimate there is on the top line between four and five million a year. >> And you have -- and I assume in coming up with that estimate that you've looked at other park and rides to see what is a [2:20:46 PM] viable -- how you can set it in such a way that it doesn't actually discourage transit riding. >> There are a number of transit agencies that currently charge at park and rides. We looked at those agencies and what they're charging and looked at a benchmark Denver. Denver is charging four dollars for out of service area customers and two dollars for in service area customers. >> Are there other cities you looked at as examples? >> So in the meeting from October the 30th in your hand handouts, in your binder, there was a section in the park and ride parking fees that would cover the assumption and the analysis and it also has some information about other agencies that are charging for parking. >> Thank you. >> Other questions or comments? Next steps? Very well. Randy, do you want to talk about next steps? >> Thank you, chair. We thought -- we just lost [2:21:47 PM] the slide. There we go. So next steps, the things that we at least see as things to bring back to, a, what staff will be working on and things to kind of bring back for next joint session would be community meetings in each city council district and the public hearing. So there's an earlier slide that talked about that and we very much look forward to all of your engagement and getting as much input. Obviously Greg has mentioned a lot of -- we have produced maybe an expanded white paper -- >> Thesis paper. >> We'll have that for April. The idea is to do that. This one is really key too. Updated ridership analysis based on campo 2045 data. So everything that we've done is based on -- from a ridership point of view is based on campo's 2040 dataset and now we're in [2:22:48 PM] possession of the 2045 is that is getting ready to get released. And now the team basically after today's action, they'll go back and run all of our key scenarios with the 2045 data which I think the peer review panel kind of hit the nail on the head and ridership will only show higher numbers. So if anything the numbers we're showing on ridership are conservative. Now, that will not change costs for capital and operating. We still feel very confident in where we are on those. But we do think that would drive ridership, which feeds into the next bullet. On our current recommended program system plan we have the gold line listed as bus rapid transit. Ideally we all prefer to have that light rail long-term so what we've done is to say that's a sequence between dedicated right-of-way bus rapid transit and then -- I think councilmember alter made a really good point. [2:23:49 PM] We think long-term as a country there could be other services available for transit. There are too many human beings living in urban centers and whether that's federal money or state money that could be an opportunity. One thing that may happen in the 2045 model runs, though, is the riderships is that that might move light rail faster than going the brt conversion. We're been holding on that is on how the 2045 model would like. We think it would be a separate alignment because we don't believe in the blue line branch system. So take color versus mode a little bit, but we want to run that analysis and see where we are with that. There are action activities. We want to come back to the main work session. The cap metro board ideally would vote and ideally adopt the local preferred alternatives, so that's a federal transit administration terminology [2:24:50 PM] that the federal ganttee has to legally say this is what we're voting on and what we prefer as the alignment in the mode to move to the federal process. So that is ideally what would happen in may. Clearly there's -- we need to still get more direction from city of Austin, we're getting funding, but I think the cap metro funding is pretty laid out. Here's what we had available capital. Here's our long-term operating and any partnership that you are able to bring together is incredibly appreciated and Greg has done a lot of work and obviously some more work to still do. We have to name the baby a little bit. The local corporation to the transparency point of view is a little confusing. We need to frame up what that means to the average person a little bit more and to -- councilmember kitchen, multiple titles today, says a little bit more -- I guess here in Texas, meat on the [2:25:50 PM] bone relating to the lgc. All policymakers can better understand that and ideally move through to the analogous potential action on that. Those are what we think are the next steps. We certainly welcome any feedback on those or other items that you don't think we've all covered. And of course we're happy to have as many conversations with you all, stakeholders and very much looking forward to the community meetings to get their input on this really significant effort. Thank you. >> Thank you, president Clarke. Member kitchen. >> Just to clarify one thing. On the updated ridership analysis based on campo 2045 data as we've talked about, that will be as that data continues to be updated like next year when the census comes back in and the data is updated. My understanding is that y'all will also look to that in the future. You don't need it now because first off the census is not done and the second thing is it's not timely to get to that part yet. [2:26:53 PM] >> That's correct. It's obviously not available today, but as new data becomes available we'll update our different scenarios and our different ridership models to reflect that. >> And by the time it's -- by the time you're applying to the federal government, fta, which is the census data should already be available by that time because that's a couple of years away. >> Yeah, that would be a couple of years away, both our application and the census data. They should align pretty well. >> Thank you. >> Just to give the smallest nuance on that. Just to go down a rabbit hole, I want to make sure it's clear. I know you know this, but for public transparencicy. There is no federal application for project connect as a program. This is a program of projects. I want to mange sure. So we are relatively close to getting Nepa kind of approval on some of our bus rapid transit projects and if you all decide to move forward with an action collectively, there may be [2:27:54 PM] some of the things out of the federal process this fall. So again as multiple policymakers mentioned, we could have projects done in 21, 22, versus waiting to 2023, 2024 to do the federal piece. So we want to staggers how we do things from the federal point of view and clearance to multiplely to projects. So I want to make sure that nuance of the public at large knows it's not just one application. It's literally probably 10 or 12 projects that will go on throughout time. >> Thank you, president Clarke. Any other questions for president Clarke or our panelists? >> I just had a comment about the community meetings. I'm sorry if I missed this. There will be the discussion on the financing mechanism and the cost, is that right? >> I think the concept is to have a -- every district meeting is to basically review this meeting today and have all the materials and hear as many inputs on whether it's transit, financial, community, any type of impact, environmental, etcetera. >> Okay. I would just encourage at [2:28:55 PM] those meetings because again the impact will be different for different areas, and so if you could drill down into the median income of that district and then figure out what that number would be, I think that would be helpful, as well as highlighting the improvements they would be getting, including less cars on the road and more people in buses. >> Okay. >> Councilmember Flannigan. >> One question on the tax issue again. I think there's -- my guess is while we're hearing a recommendation, there might be some options still available in terms of program timing and consequencing that may result in slight changes to that [indiscernible] I'd like to work more through that thought process and to think through what would it look like possibly for us to do a joint work session with the commissioners' court to think about what their future projects look like. If there's a future that Travis county does county [2:29:56 PM] wide sidewalk bond in five years then that means that other programmatic eliminatements can move forward at different rates and so I that I might be an interesting step, not holding up this in any way, but thinking through how maybe we take the success of this process so far and think about that with the commissioners' court. Commissioners, I think that would be a really interesting thing we've not done before, which could be an interesting conversation. You know, most of us on the council ran in 2014 and the last time somewhat similar conversations were being had. But I went to all the meetings. I don't remember many of you coming to those meetings, but I sat in city hall chambers and I watched mayor Leffingwell and Terry, you were probably there, through that whole process. It felt very different than what this feels like not just because I get to sit up [2:30:57 PM] here now, but because it felt very different. And councilmember tovo, you will also involved being on the council at that time. This is so much bigger and so much better. It was talked about, we have the advantage, you know, if we think of a silver lining of having not done this in 2000 either, but we have the advantage of looking at the mistakes other regions have made and looking at the improvements in technology and the lessons learned. Cities like Dallas and Portland contemplating what they could have done if they had done a tunnel in the beginning and how much more expensive it would be to do that later. Or regions that underfunded their capital renewal and operations and maintenance and how 20 and 30 years later they don't have a sustainable source of funding and now they find their systems are crumbling. We won't make those mistakes with this plan, which I find to be very encouraging. There is a challenging balance for to us strike, however. There are a lot of questions in the public about what this is going to look like [2:31:58 PM] and there are going to be people who want to know to the inch where the rail line goes, where the bus stop is, where the trees are being planted, where the sidewalks are. But at some point you don't answer those questions for free. It takes money to do that research and engineering and modeling, and at some point we can't continue to spend money before we have voter approval. At some point you need voter approval to continue the work. So I want us to be thoughtful with how we engage with the public on those questions because we can't fairly answer to that level of specificity because it will take money that we haven't gotten voter approval yet in order to answer that level of gale. But the drawings and rendering and the map is really very special. I want to thank capital metro and staff and the city and I know prior to the resolution that I put together and kitchen and a few others who helped me put that together in August, I know y'all were already wanting to work together so I don't think we invented a new process, but to see the [2:33:00 PM] results of this comes down to three key areas. I feel a level of transparency I've never seen before, not just this process, but in the peer review, which I think is a really underreported process. We did not do that in 2014. The governance structure is both an opportunity for oversight, but an opportunity to operate this construction project in a way that also reduces costs. And lgc will be able to do things faster and cheaper in much the same way frankly that we're doing the new planning and development building where we're thinking about how we operate as a government in new ways that allows use to leverage the market and other things. And ultimately in sustainability, which to me is in multiple parts. There's financial sustainability, this ongoing permanent funding source, which is something new frankly. I know there's some comparisons to the med school, but I find this to be a very different type of question, one that really allows us to solve these problems in a long-term sustainable way. [2:34:02 PM] And the program integration, in 2014 we weren't doing convention center, we weren't doing airport. We had not passed an asmp. We have done all those things now. The ability to integrate all of the things we're doing in the community in one decision makes it scary, but also makes it actually doable in a way that connects all the pieces. And then sustainability in terms of climate change. I don't have to convince this room. I had a constituent come to me and talk about how air quality, there's research that shows that air quality is reducing academic performance. I'm sure that's not just impacting the kids. So the idea that we could put all this stuff together in one referendum this November is really exciting and I'm excited to share the ballot with such a [2:35:03 PM] referendum because while I will be up for reelection and a few of you will be joining me on that ballot item, this is really an opportunity to solve the problems that haven't been solved in the past with tools that haven't been used in the past, process that wasn't followed in the past and a decision that determines our future. >> Thank you, councilmember. Councilmember pool. >> Pool: Thanks. I did want to follow up on page 30 and I guess this would be for Mr. Canally and Maine for the city manager. I'm looking at these are the program integration and coordination. We have four public initiatives listed there. I know airport, the airport expansion that's funded through the dedicated fees that are in that enterprise, aviation fees and concessions and transportation taxes and everything there so we have a sense of how much that's going to cost and where that money is coming from. South central waterfront is still in development and it's kind of early days for that. Mckalla place we have a general sense on where the [2:36:03 PM] funding is on that and it's a private enterprise, building the stadium. The convention center expansion, I was curious, we've been talking about the financials and the financial analysis and the source of revenue in order to make a determination on whether we should continue with the convention center expansion. And we still don't have those numbers so I -- we've talked a number of times about how not everybody agrees that we have agreed to expand the convention center and we actually don't know what that means. Is it one of five options that were given to us last year. So I was just curious if we would be seeing those numbers any time soon, especially know since it's being listed on here. And I know that development of that portion of downtown is also significant with regard to various rail [2:37:05 PM] stations. >> That's a great comment, councilmember, and all four of owes initiatives that are described, many others are at various stages of discussion not only with our community, but within the council and various stages of understanding exactly what the financial impact would be. We are actively working on that information for the council. I know within months they're planning to get that back to you for further consideration. >> Thank you, councilmember. Any other final comments? Questions? Mayor? >> I would conclude by saying that again, I think it's really exciting. I would urge everybody in the city and in the region to take advantage of the next couple of months to comment on this information as it gets developed, recognizing that in may it will be coming back to the council and to cap metro. [2:38:07 PM] I concur with those comments. This is just a really exciting time. We're not going to be confronted with as many truly moments to make true generational change in our city and this is one of those. And I hope and trust that we'll do it well. >> Thank you, mayor. City manager cronk, any comments? >> I just really want to thank you for the opportunity to present our concepts here. It's been a really exciting and rewarding experience for the city team and we really look forward to the next steps. Thank each and every one of you for your attention here and I encourage he everyone to visit projectconnect.com and to reach out to us and let us know how we can further shed light on these exciting initiatives. >> President Clarke? >> I can't this thank our [2:39:09 PM] partners enough. They've been absolutely fantastic and I appreciate all your leadership. We will try to give you a little reprieve, all the policymakers, I know you have a few other topics, but we'll be reaching out really quickly on to have our consultant and our team talk about the lgc and some other work we're doing. Thank the community again. We're when talking about engaging over 40,000 people that is a big effort and we hope we'll have thousands and thousands more. And lastly, I just want to again, I said it earlier, but I cannot thank the staff enough. The work that has gone into this has been amazing. Once we're adjourned take the rest of the day off because we'll be back at it again tomorrow. >> That's very generous of you, president Clarke. [Laughter]. I want to just conclude by saying I got on the cap metro board in August of 2014 only to watch the last election fail. And one of the things that was clear to me as a board member is that we at cap metro and my colleagues in [2:40:09 PM] the staff and on the board share the responsibility of bringing back to our region and community a vision for how to go forward. And it's a challenge because we're resource strapped. We have one source of revenue and we're today utilizing all of that for what we do. But it is very gratifying to be here today with a regional plan, with a 30-year program of work, and I'm particularly gratified that our colleagues at the city council and on the staff of the city have joined us in an effort to bring forward this multi- generational regional plan. The fact that we've been able to work on it and get to this point, it feels like something significant has happened today. We have something tangible, we have something real. And the question to me is much less what should we do about -- rather it seems to me is where do we get started? And it's not to say we don't have big questions and hard decisions ahead of us, but I [2:41:11 PM] think the list of things that we can do and should do are abundantly clear and now we just have to get our sleeves rolled up and really get on with the next piece of this. Thank you all for taking this journey with us. We look forward to the next steps. Thank you, president Clarke. I think you celebrated two years with us just this last week and what a two years it's been, huge energy and contribution. So thank you very much. And unless there's something more to do today, the cap metro board will stand adjourned at 2:42. >> Mayor Adler: As is the city council meeting. >> Thank you all.