Mobility Committee Meeting Transcript – 04/30/2020 Title: City of Austin Channel: 6 - COAUS Recorded On: 4/30/2020 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 4/30/2020 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. [1:02:23 PM] >> Kitchen: I'm going to call to order the meeting of the mobility committee. And just so -- I think I can see everyone. Let me just see. Jimmy, are you on? I'm not seeing you. >> Flannigan: [Inaudible]. >> Kitchen: Are you on? >> Flannigan: I am. Do you hear me? >> Kitchen: Yes, I hear you now. >> Flannigan: You don't see my video? >> Kitchen: I don't see your video for some reason. >> Flannigan: All right. I'll work on it. >> Kitchen: Okay. And I see Alison and Delia and Paige. And then we're also joined by Tasha and Kathie. So we're going to start with our approval of minutes. So do I have a motion? Let me call the mayor pro tem for a motion to approve the minutes. Seconded by councilmember alter. All in favor please say aye? [1:03:28 PM] [Background noise]. >> Kitchen: I'm not seeing Paige. Okay. So we've just passed the minutes that isly. So our first briefing today is the impact of covid-19 on transportation. And atd's response. So I believe that we have a presentation to be brought up. And I'm not sure who is -- >> That is correct, councilmember. >> Kitchen:. Thank you, rob. I'm recognizing rob spillar, if you will go ahead and proceed. >> Great. Let me get to my notes here. Thank you. If I.T. Could bring up that slide show I'd appreciate it. >> Kitchen: So rob, can you hold on just one moment? >> Yes, of course. >> Kitchen: Actually, let me just say I realize that [1:04:28 PM] we have two speakers, but they're speaking on specific items, one on the street impact fee and another on the Rainey street. So I'll wait and call on them right before we have those presentations. So you can go ahead. And let's all hold our questions until the end. So go ahead, rob, if you will go ahead. And we have about 30 minutes for this segment. Okay? >> Okay. Well, this is going to be a new experience for us doing this over the phone, so if you could back up one slide to the cover side, we'll start there. I'm also going to be joined by my assistant director Jason john-michael over our new mobility since that is the area that has been most affected by our covid response, but let me start out. Austin transportation and our partners at public works and the projects office, we [1:05:29 PM] continue to operate under the work remotely and work safely by the city manager. We are discussing those activities for the critical issues as we move forward. Our ability and commitment to respond to emergency issues, work within right-of-way, traffic signals, remains our focus, and we consider these functions the critical ones in maintaining the safety of the traveling public. Impacts from the covid virus have really been felt, however, in our transportation services. Those are the ones that are typically services run by private, outside entities, very important to the traveling public. But the covid response from the community has definitely had an impact on that. We've also slowed some of our planned work inside our operation to make sure that we're supporting those [1:06:30 PM] operations that are critical to the traveling public and to our safety requirements. As I said; I'm joined today by my assistant director Jason john-michael, and we'll be making the rest of the presentation really focused on the major impact that we've seen that the epidemic or the pandemic has had on transportation. And so with that I'm going to turn over to to Jason john-michael and we'll go back and forth between the slides here as appropriate. Jason. >> Thank you, rob. Hello everyone on the mobility committee. I hope everyone is staying safe and protected. If I.T. Could please advance to the next slide, please. While we're waiting for that slide to come up, I'm going to walk through several different areas of mobility services and what we've seen in a comparison way of what we've seen in previous [1:07:31 PM] [indiscernible]. The first one coming up should be the taxicab trip count. I would say that everything in mobility services specific to mobility service [background noise] For trips or active transportation or even the parking system, what we've noticed is that these areas of the transportation system are -- [background noise]. A lot of early key performance indicators around economic downturn as well as economic recovery. So while I'm going to show you these numbers, we are tracking them on a day-to-day basis and what we've noticed in the parking system, for instance, is that -- much like in the way we're tracking other things, we've noticed there's began a small uptick in parking transactions over the last week. So while these numbers are going to be bleak, do know that we already beginning to see what we believe are some of the indicators of the market beginning to rebound [1:08:33 PM] there. So specific here what you're going to see is the number of taxicab counts and the number of trips that were had and obviously a starkness as we look at the comparison between March of last year and March of this year. Next slide. The next slide is the vehicle for hire operations. So this involves our pedicabs, our Liam scenes, airport shuttle services, includes taxis as well as among everything else. What you're seeing here is a comparison between February and March of this year. And you can notice the difference in the number of [1:09:35 PM] from March and how different the scale was from March of the previous year. Similarly as it relates to scooters and other micromobility trips we began seeing a great reduction of that over the course of March and April. Some of these trips we should note that most of this is reported in arrears. So for the month that you're seeing a lot of times it's the month in arrears, so that's why April is looking as low as it is. We've collected all the trip counts from the scooters and other micromobility devices and have rolled those up for an early report. We're seeing anywhere from an 80 to 90 percent reduction in trips overall regardless of mode. Next slide. [1:10:44 PM] The next slide is a slide on how shared mobility has had an influence in the stay home/work safe stay order. Volt Austin B cycle is currently available and staff are implementing additional cleaning efforts to clean the bicycles as well as the stations and the kiosks. Current assets under the Austin B cycle program 200 ebikes as well as a hundred standard bikes and stations. The shared mobility providers that also have paused some operations in the city include zip car, lime, wheels, spin and jump. And as of last night Lyft has suspended its scooter operations in Austin. So to that end this last update, the following remaining micromobility providers in Austin are bird and the electric moped [1:11:46 PM] program. >> So this is rob spillar again, jumping back in. And we should anticipate that there is going to be a continued shrinkage in the market and so some of these companies may or may not return after we reemerge into the new normal of living with covid-19 in our community. If we could move to the next slide, please. The next slide moves to special events. One of the things we've noticed is that since -- well, since we started to work with south-by to cancel out there's been something like 350 special events rescheduled or canceled. Many of these are getting rescheduled until some time this fall. Again, next slide, please. There you go, special events. Many of those are getting -- [1:12:46 PM] attempting to reschedule to this fall. As you know, our fall special events season is almost as busy as our spring season, so where we find slots we're certainly allowing those special events to slot in, but we obviously will be taking cues from the city council and the evolving conditions related to covid-19 to help determine if further cancellations in the fall will be necessary. I can tell you nationwide many big conferences are going to a more virtual environment in terms of trying to continue providing the services those special events are creating like conferences, but doing it in an online experience so we should expect special vents to continue Toby slow as we go into -- continue to be slow as we go into the future. I'm going to give it back to Jason to talk about online [1:13:46 PM] parking transactions. >> Next slide, please. Much like the other graphs that I've had, what you will see here is a year to year comparison month over month with the parking transactions. This is the number of transactions that are happening in our onstreet system. So what you see here again is some report in arrears, so starting in March and through April what we've noticed is a significant reduction in the number of on street parking sessions that are being had for obvious reasons with the stay home/work safe order. As I mentioned earlier, we were down around about eight percent of what our projected revenue should be or transactions should be for our onstreet parking system. And we've been managing that day-to-day. What I've noticed over the last week is we believe we're seeing the flattening of that lower end of the belle curve and may be headed towards some level of [1:14:48 PM] seeing the onstreet parking systems and those transactions begin to slowly increase. As of yesterday we were sitting at about 17% of our projections, so we believe that we're beginning to see the rebound effect of that. Next slide, please. >> Kitchen: I just want to remind everyone to be sure and mute if you're not speaking. We're hearing a little bit of background noise and Paige turning and that sort of thing. -- Page turning and that sort of thing. >> As we're waiting for the next slide to come up I'll mention that, you know, tied to what rob's previous slide was, with events is where we really see the parking system have the level of transactions it does. Hence you can see through the spring season they usually have a high end around the fall area with the acl in September. We also see a high level of parking transactions. [1:15:49 PM] We're expecting that depending on where the things look as we head into the fall season we might see more recovery in the parking system. Initiative bad news. How about some good news? In this event my smart mobility team and the parking enterprise began looking at what we could do in order to help Austin businesses meet the orders while also finding some ways to help them continue to deliver important services, deliver food and is also keep these businesses open. So one of the things that we wanted to make note in today's mobility committee meeting was some of the work that we've done around the food pickup priority Zones for restaurants for takeout and delivery services and how well that worked. We had well over 462 parking spaces. You can see there the breakout of the ones that were metered and non-metered [1:16:50 PM] that were made available for in front of restaurants and for the purposes of pickup and dropoff Zones. As we continue to monitor the day-to-day pivot towards a reopening we're beginning to return the parking system back to its original intent and we'll begin collecting those pickup/dropoff priority Zones and turning them back into the traditional parking management Zones that they were before. There's an active, interactive web map if anyone is interested if you can go and look at all the restaurants that were a part of that. There were over 1200 restaurants that we surveyed and kept basically week to week tabs on on seeing whether or not they were remaining in business or not so that we weren't sending people or affecting curb management in an area where businesses were not open. Next slide, please. [1:17:50 PM] So related to the good apple program. This is one of those areas where, you know, you set off when doing good planning work, you fund meaningful challenges and partners to work with and sometimes you get really lucky. So one of the challenge recipient of the 40 city 1 challenge was good apple -- Ford city 1 challenge was good apple, a one to one challenge of fruit, produce, as well as shelf able programs where a person would buy a box and then a box would be provided to a person of need that's currently experiencing food insecurity. At the onset of our covid-19 response we began working with Ford and the the good apple team to set forth a specialized food delivery program that really focused in on some of the things that we learned happening in the eastern crescent related [1:18:51 PM] to the intersection of mobility and healthy living. And from that what we learned is that there was a particular group of individuals that the good apple program could really help those particular residents out and in a time when there was going to be a great amount of need. So we're very proud of the fact that the good apple and the smart mobility team was able to amass this food delivery program in literally three days. And began collecting food through the food bank and delivering it through a week. So this is one area where we've been able to take some of the innovative work that we've done around new business strategies and new operational strategies that help deliver community good and take it in a new way that we quite honestly didn't expect and are very grateful and happy that we've had the opportunity to help our community here. Some other -- by the numbers, if you could move to the next slide, on the [1:19:56 PM] good apple program, this is where it's really pretty inspiring to see some of the poundage of food, especially the number of pounds of fresh produce that we were able to provide. And those that were part of the Ford city one challenge are maybe aware of that, that this good apple program is ran by two Dell medical school students who purposefully made sure that the meals had a level of calorie and a balanced calorie intake moreover than just shelf stable food. So the amount of fresh vegetables we're delivering is really inspiring here. You see that we have almost delivered 100,000 pounds of food, and of that I can tell you that almost 27,000 pounds of that are fresh, is fresh produce. [1:20:56 PM] So it's been really, really amazing to see how something that makes Austin great, our local organic farms and farm to stable concepts that we have here in our region, we were able to leverage that food before it spoiled and put it in the tables and in the pantryies and refrigerators of people who needed it. Next slide. This next slide is a map of the Austin area and it gives you a very good understanding of where we were able to affect some change and deliver some food. So when that comes up you'll get an idea of the areas that we've focused in on. Again, you will notice that it's around the crescent. >> Thank you, Jason. [1:21:58 PM] If we could move to the next slide now. We just have a few more slides, councilmembers. I also want to talk about the role of Austin transportation department in supporting the -- directly supporting the covid testing facilityies. We were asked to assist both the fire department and health department in setting up the mobile testing sites, and so we actually were the department that suggested the St. John's location where there's some existing infrastructure that lent itself to early setup of the facility. A number of divisions here at Austin transportation directly supported that, not only the engineering groups and the arterial management program, but also the staffing from the parking department as well as my various field crews to help organize traffic and move traffic through. If I could have the next [1:22:59 PM] slide. Unbeknownst to me I got responses from both the fire department and Austin public health talking about the importance of our staffing and supporting those efforts and we're just so proud to be able to help our sister departments in making sure that Austin stays safe and healthy through adequate testing. I'll let the slides catch up. Next slide, please. There you go. There are the comments from Austin fire department and Austin public health, very proud of those. I'll let you guys digest those a second. And when you're ready to move to the next slide, if the I.T. Folks could please go ahead and advance it to the next slide. The other area that we've been working on is to help [1:24:01 PM] the parks department as well as the residents of Austin find healthy places to exercise. Very early on at took action and opened up several streets to provide extra recreational area. Some of you may be aware that the roadways, pleasant valley, we have actually across the longhorn dam changed it from a four lane facility to a three lane facility. This is an area where you know the sidewalks have historically been very narrow. We actually removed the barrier fencing and placed extra space in the roadway lanes for people to cross that bridge to really give an alternative to crowding along that sidewalk. We've also closed Riverside through the park. You know that piece of roadway was actually designed to be able to be converted to pedestrian area during festivals and so we thought it appropriate to go ahead and make that change. [1:25:01 PM] I've spoken to several councilmembers over the last week and we remain ready to work with your offices if you have streets or recommendations on streets that you think would also be good for converting we're happy to look at those. Obviously as the state begins to contemplate coming out of dorm the many, if you will, or out of seclusion, we'll have to temper our conversion of additional streets with the demand that may be out there there. First and foremost our concern with regards to streets being used by pedestrians is obviously safety and so a lot of our streets are pretty slow right now and absent of cars. So I was just in the Bouldin neighborhood, for instance, this week and noticed lots of people using the streets very appropriately to exercise and walk and I want to encourage that where people feel safe to do that, but again, we're happy to work with councilmembers on [1:26:04 PM] specific streets. And we are continuing to look for other opportunities to do that, is to look for streets to make appropriate conversions while traffic is down. If I could go to the next slide, please. This is our last slide. You know, throughout this process we've been keeping our eyes on the ball in terms of critical projects. We've been able to keep many of our major bike and pedestrian programs moving forward, projects that include oak springs drive, weberville road, pedestrian crossings and really working on the bicycle facilities along there. Shoal creek boulevard continues to move forward. In fact, I believe this concrete work here is in councilmember pool's district, really showing some of the new concrete work there at 38th street. And similar at 45th street [1:27:04 PM] that's going on to really create a whole new biking corridor and pedestrian corridor along shoal creek boulevard. Weberville, pleasant valley road improvements continue there, bluebonnet lane as well as chestnut street, we're doing more striping and marking to create that new focus going forward. As the pandemic continues, our work to get these projects out will continue to be metered in terms of what we can do. As public works begins to restart the paving program and resurfacing program, we'll be focused on making sure that those streets get repainted or restriped as you will, as fast as possible, but there may be some streets that remain tabbed. Those are the plastic tabs that designate the striping for a longer period of time than we would certainly prefer, but we will keep tabs on that, no punish [1:28:06 PM] intended. Sorry about that. But we will be working as diligently as possible to get those streets restriped as quickly as possible. But we continue to move forward with projects. I'd like to be able to tell you with the low traffic we have accelerated stuff, but the stay home/work safe approach is metering the amount of work we can get out and we will continue to endeavor to make sure that we keep focused on these major projects, but safety first and critical items first. So with that, that's the last slide. We're happy to take questions both Jason john-michael and I are here and will respond to questions as they come up, councilmember. >> Kitchen: Thank you very much. Thank you, rob and Jason. I appreciate that. So councilmember alter, we'll begin with you and [1:29:06 PM] then councilmember Ellis after that. >> Alter: Thank you, can you hear me? >> We can. >> Alter: Great. So first of all, I just wanted to applaud the good apple program. I became a member, whatever, and got my first delivery on Sunday, and there was a lot of produce in there and it was really wonderful to know that another bag was going for another family in need and it was super high quality. So I think it's great that we were able to roll that out and to help for all of us to have the food be able to be delivered and fresh and ordered from. So I appreciate that. I wanted to ask about the -- what else we could be doing with respect to making our streets safer and more welcoming for pedestrians in this particular period. And I wanted to understand what options there were for [1:30:07 PM] kind of our pedestrian buttons at intersections not needing to be pushed and being sort of automated and how we do that in a respectful way, also for Ada needs. And just kind of helping to reduce the pedestrian crowding at certain intersections and things like that, what we can do along those lines. >> Thank you, councilmember. This is difficult with a little bit of delay from the visual and the verbal. So give me a second if we are slow to respond. We've actually moved through a lot of our signal system, especially in downtown, and put them on what's called recall, so that the pedestrian phase automatically comes up. One of our concerns as we move out to more suburban environments where the arterials have faster speeds and are typically wider that [1:31:09 PM] we still think we need that push button to be activated because of the number or lack of number of pedestrians. What we've seen is we've started seeing impatience by drivers waiting on signal phases that they may not understand why there's a phase there and so they're stopped at the stoplight when maybe another direction that they're not aware of is going or in the case of a pedestrian automatic call- up has called and there's no pedestrian there. We're also going through the system and shortening cycles at signals to better meet drivers' expectation because we also don't want unsafe driving of running red lights. But yes, we heard that direction from council or that question from council very early on and so we tried to respond by going to our highest volume intersections and going ahead and putting them on the automatic pedestrian call-ups per your suggestion. >> Alter: I think there may be some not downtown [1:32:10 PM] where we also need to be doing that as well. And then in terms of the open streets and whatnot, is there a way to create a process where people can suggest particular roads that might be in need? There's such variation across the city in terms of the particular streets and there may be, you know, some really good spots that we could be doing this more in, and it seems like an open source of ideas might be helpful there. >> Yes, we will work on that, yes. >> Alter: Great. And lastly, I know you mentioned safety was the highest priority and obviously that should be the highest priority when we're choosing which projects to move forward with, but are there some that might be better than others with respect to a stimulus [1:33:12 PM] program moving forward and how is council able to weigh in on to those priorities if we expedite projects? >> Councilmember, I think that's a great idea. It's a bigger answer than I can probably give to you this afternoon. But yes, investing in infrastructure is always a great way to stimulate the economy, and we're very focused on that. I think campo took action today -- rather, the transportation commission, the state transportation commission took action today to fund I-35 and so that obviously opens up a number of projects that were in -- projects and studies that were in various stages of getting to delivery that will have work already done on then so they will be good candidates to fund or look for funding whether that be federal, state, local funding to continue as part of a stimulus. But we're very eager to [1:34:14 PM] identify additional infrastructure that could be a great investment as we move forward. >> Kitchen: Rob, perhaps you can get back to councilmember alter and the rest of us on -- I think that's a good question about which kind of projects in the future might be useful for stimulus. So councilmember alter, if we can move on now to councilmember Ellis, is that all right? Okay. Go ahead, councilmember Ellis. >> Ellis: Thank you, councilmember kitchen. I think this is a good time for me to daylight that we are adding an item on to the addendum that will be posted tomorrow, and it is exactly in response to the slow streets, open streets initiative. We're going to call it healthy streets because I think that's a really good way to think about this, but we know that first of all, thank you to director spillar for you and your team being so nimble during this time. I know that a lot of things are changing very quickly and I appreciate y'all being very responsive to the community needs. [1:35:14 PM] When I saw that Riverside drive was closed at auditorium shores, I thought it was a good way to allow for the public to be able to safely enter spaces so they can practice safe social distancing while not being forced to be closer on sidewalks and trails and things of that nature. So when we had seen there was a national movement of trying to utilize these spaces in a healthier manner, we tried to jump on doing an addendum to the next council meeting. I hope that it will show that there is council report widespread to do things like this, walk Austin has taken the lead initiative on this. There are a number of other fantastic partners that are trying to utilize this space. And to councilmember alter's point, I think it's very helpful for people within their own neighborhoods to think about where they have slower or quieter streets th they could bring to our attention and the transportation department's attention as spaces that are [1:36:14 PM] appropriate for people to be able to move a bit off the sidewalk and utilize these spaces in a safe manner during this time. So I just wanted to daylight that. You will be seeing the information tomorrow and I really appreciate the co-sponsor's input and transportation department has been really helpful in trying to be nimble and responsive, but also very calculating in what is the most appropriate and best way to move forward with something like this. I wanted to bring that to everyone's attention to be on the lookout. >> Thank you. That sounds like a good resolution so we look forward to seeing it. Who else has questions? Councilmember Flannigan, Garza, mayor pro tem, do you have any? No? Councilmember tovo. >> Tovo: I have a couple of quick ones. Thanks for the opportunity to join you all today for a little bit anyway. Two quick questions. [1:37:16 PM] One, when we can wait until the council resolution which sounds like an interesting time to talk about it, but I guess director spillar, I'm interested in that question of if businesses are reopening, what happens to those streets that have now been closed? At what point will you be prompted to go back and reevaluate some of those closures. I think it's a great idea and I've gotten a lot of email. I know we've been in communication with your office as well about some of that the city feedback, but given that the situation is changing, I just don't know where that leaves with regard to closing additional streets. You identified that as a potential challenge, so if you would like to talk about that now or potentially in the context of the resolution, that would be helpful. >> Now, councilmember, if I could just talk about it now -- >> Kitchen: Let me just say, rob -- rob, let me just [1:38:17 PM] say that -- >> If I could talk about it now. I'm sorry, I can't hear you. >> Kitchen: I just wanted to do a time check. I think that would be fine to talk about it for a few minutes, but then we just have a few minutes -- >> Tovo: Unless you want to wait. And the other question is -- sure. Councilmember kitchen, either way you want to handle it. The other question I had is a very quick one. We have received some communications from limousine services in the area about whether the city could waive the requirement to have a certain number of vehicles in service. And I wonder if you could just very quickly address whether that's something that you all have considered and if so what your recommendation is. >> Sure. Why don't we respond to the limousine piece and we will try to respond in a communication on the streets. The short answer of when to reopen streets is we'll have to remain nimble. I don't have a positive answer on that. [1:39:17 PM] Jason, if you could answer about the limosines. >> Thank you. We've been in touch with the limousine companies. Like we have most of the mobility services. We've been working with the limousine companies to understand more of the accommodations that are available in the director's rules. So there was some misunderstanding that the limousine companies had around stretch limos, versus other vehicles. And our permit office is currently working with limousine companies so they understand what commotions are already built in there that they could take advantage of that would assist to the constituents' point, some of the costs of doing business currently without necessarily having the level of business necessary to offset those costs. >> Thank you very much for [1:40:18 PM] that additional info. I look forward to the broader conversation about the streets, and I want to thank you all in transportation and everything you've done to respond to the pandemic. >> Kitchen: Thank you. I'm not seeing anyone else raise their hands, so I'll pose one question that actually I think is something that, rob, that I think you would need to get back to us on. So we don't need to take them right now, but I do think it's important that we have a conversation at some point about telecommuting. I think we've seen with everyone being at home, we've obviously seen a much greater use of that opportunity and the impact its had on our congestion. So I would like to talk with you later at some point. I would like to invite you to come back to us with some recommendations around how we can support greater telecommunication. >> Yes, ma'am. I think that's a great [1:41:20 PM] opportunity. >> So councilmember alter, we're going to move on but if you have one question, go ahead. >> I want you to to know I have a resolution that will be going in tomorrow that will have the city manager to review the telecommuting policies in light of what we've learned. It's actually in that resolution. >> All right, thank you. So okay. I'm going to move on now to the next item on our agenda, which is county Rainey shared streets pilot results. I said at this point that I would take one of our speakers who I assume is available to speak. So if our staff could help with that. And that was Paula Kaufmann. Is Paula on the line and wants to give us her three minute comment? >> Yes, I'm here, this is Paula. And it's not really about Rainey street, but it's something that is very similar to what Rainey [1:42:21 PM] street is experiencing. My presentation is about parking. So do you want me to go ahead and give my presentation? Hello? >> This is the av tech. The presentation is being shared. I think there's just a delay right now. >> Hello? >> Kitchen: Yes, please go ahead. >> Okay. Hello? You want me to go ahead and go? >> Kitchen: We can hear you, Paula. >> Okay. Stop putting financial pressure on our workforce with unaffordable parking meters. Did you know that residents on south congress are greatly impacted by commercial activity downtown? Why? The workforce cannot afford the expense of parking downtown. Thus they park on south [1:43:21 PM] congress in two-hour spaces, meant for our beloved south congress, the heart of keep Austin weird, all day long. Why? According to city staff they can't afford to pay the parking, estimated at $70,000 a year for two officers. So what does the city do to solve the problem? They paid the consultant $300,000 to create solutions. Yes, $300,000. I couldn't believe it and neither could any of my fellow volunteers. $300,000 could have paid enforcement for four years, starting two years ago. The consultant's recommendations for parking meters [indiscernible] Out lay of cash. The east Austin parking system pays over $130,000 a year in debt service alone. I urge the city of [indiscernible]. [1:44:21 PM] I asked our consultants to negotiate with the owners of a new 497-space garage on music lane off of south congress. They said no. I urged council to request that merchants provide safe, affordable parking for the workforce in this garage? And fund it if needed through the affordable parking program. Also [indiscernible]. With only 14 parking spaces. One business often takes up 50 spaces daily, forcing the nearby residents to use rcp. In conclusion I ask that you hire enough staff to enforce laws and stop sending money out of town to consultants. Also look to the residents. I have a home in Bouldin and I've been involved in parking issues around south congress for eight years. No one I asked wants the parking stations on the residential streets. Parking meters will just force the lower income [1:45:22 PM] workforce to park in neighborhoods south of us. A popular solution, most do want you to bring back the dillo or a circulator, a lower cost option that provides a job for a driver and I can help I find sources for these finances if you have questions. >> Thank you very much, Paula. We'll now move to our Rainey shared street pilot results. So if you want to as you present that. >> Cole Griffen, Austin transportation manager. Can everyone hear me? >> Yes. >> Okay. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to provide an update on our shared street pilot on Rainey street. We wanted to share our preliminary observations and information with you as we work to finalize the report. So as we go through the [1:46:25 PM] presentation, if you see anything that you would like for us to highlight further, perhaps provide more information within the report, please let me know. >> Kitchen: We have about 20 minutes, Cole, we have about 20 minutes for this presentation and we'll hold our questions until the end. So thank you. Keep going. >> 12 slides, it should be good. So slide 2 is recap of how we got to the shared street pilot. Council passed a resolution in June of 2019. APD and atd work together to determine the logistics of the street closure. The days of the week were decided to be Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights from 9:00 P.M. To 2:30 A.M. And it would run from December 5th to March 8th. That would have given us three months of data to understand what the results were on the impact to [1:47:25 PM] mobility and safety. I'd also -- we needed to get out before south by southwest was supposed to come in and close the street again. So the shared street pilot was conducted as a safety closure similar to sixth street. We heard feedback that we wanted to make sure that the street was shared so it was open to pedestrians, scooters, bikes, pedicabs, electric shuttles. And along with the pilot logistics we made sure that there were additional passenger loading and unloading Zones identified. Slide 3 is a map that was sent out with a notification that just showed the street closure limits between Davis street and river street. Slide 4, and let me know if I need to slow down. I know atxn is a 30-second [1:48:28 PM] delay. So on slide 4, this is just a timeline of events leading up to the launch. At the same time that the resolution was passed to do the shared street pilot, we were initiating a Rainey mobility study. And that included a lot of modeling and data analysis. We also conducted field observations to observe travel behavior. We were able to engage the business community on what an impact of closing Rainey street would do to their business, whether accessing their business through the alley during the closure periods would work. We also conducted traffic counts that were used to be able to compare to traffic counts that were collected during the pilot. So leading up to the launch of the pilot, we gave [1:49:30 PM] presentations and solicited feedback from October to December starting with downtown commission. A Rainey resident task force, a pedestrian advisory council and then the mobility community. And at that mobility committee meeting in November is where we provided some early feedback and made adjustments to some of the logistics. And we moved the launch of the pilot back from what was early November to December. We summarized all this information in an amendment to mayor and council and sent that out in late November and then sent out notifications to residents and businesses as well as provided social media and website content for city-wide messaging. Slide five I'll forego. That was a video taken [1:50:30 PM] during the pilot. I'm not sure if it would work anyways right now, but it was an interesting video showing the typical night life that happens on Rainey street. In this case with it being closed to vehicles, so people were able to walk freely and in this particular area there's a sidewalk gap. So this is actually where people have to walk in the street when they walk along that west curb. Background background. [Background noise]. Slide 6 is a summary of our observations regarding safety and atmosphere. Safety was maintained and the atmosphere was improved. There were no serious injury or fatal crashes documented [1:51:32 PM] during the pilot. Based on our data collection there was one non-cr3 crash in the area on red river at Davis street. A non-cr3 crash is considered a fender bend other a crash that is less than $1,000 in property damage. In the first week of the pilot there was a fire truck and tnc resident on Rainey street just off of river street. A tenant backed into a fire truck. During this event AFD was still able to access south Rainey to respond to a pulled fire alarm incident. In general, to that effect, AFD, ems was still able to operate within the Rainey neighborhood area during the [1:52:33 PM] closure. APD also determined that pedestrian volumes at times didn't warrant the safety closure so they used their discretion as to when they would put the barricades up. Sometimes on a Thursday night it didn't get busy until 11:00 P.M. So that's when they would put the barricades up. And often times if it was not as business late in the night, they would remove the barricades early. Overall the atmosphere was improved. There are minimal conflicts between those. As you can see in the picture there was plenty of space for people to navigate and the ability to spread out. On slide 7 in regard to congestion, parking and circulation, everything operated as we expected. In regard to con congestion, compared to our observations pre-pilot there was no abnormal congestion observed in the rainy area. [1:53:34 PM] As well as no abnormal backups or difficulties for the mac attendees or south Rainey residents observed. For pickup and dropoff and circulation that also operated as we expected both from the north end of the closure and south end. However, that was the source of most of the congestion that occurred in the area. In general where our passenger loading and unloading Zones were located, if a pickup and dropoff -- if the curb was clear people would use the space to pickup and dropoff, but if there was a car there, whether it was dropping off or parked there temporarily, pickups and dropoffs were occurring within the street which was something that was observed before the pilot as well. [1:54:36 PM] In general comments that we received from operators is that they felt more comfortable not picking up or dropping off on Rainey street itself. In regard to parking, we were concerned about whether or not moving available onstreet parking on Rainey street would impact people's ability to still get to Rainey street, whether it was a visitor or someone working but in most conditions we found that they were available parking spaces at most times. During the closure most cars complied with the new parking regulations within the closure so cars were able to be removed or the people that park there drove off before the barricades went in. As far as the north end of Rainey street, this is where there is the most complications with parking because in a typical before [1:55:38 PM] condition, those are onstreet parking spaces and during the closure they're being converted to pickup and dropoff, so cars either stayed there longer than the limit allowed or people were used to parking in that location and didn't understand that they were no longer able to park there. At one point early on APD was managing telling cars that were parked there, but it created a greater congestion problem when tow trucks were trying to remove those cars. Slide 8. Is a summary of our survey responses by type. We conducted pre-pilot intercept surveys as well as intercept surveys within the street during the pilot. We did intercept surveys at a mac event. We also conducted a meeting with the business community [1:56:41 PM] and we held an online survey from February 6th to March 11th. In total of those surveys, 46% were people going out on Rainey street while 28% were residents of the neighborhood. And six percent were workers workers. Slide 9, this was one of the primary questions that we posed in the survey was how strongly do you support the Rainey street closure? Early on we heard feedback that we didn't want to just see the overall response, but we wanted to be able to break it down by the type of respondents so in this case we're looking at it by Rainey residents, people who live in Austin, people that live in the greater Austin area, as well as out of town [1:57:41 PM] or no location provided. In general there was a strong support for the street closure across the board. The rainy residents had the most strongly opposed, however, there was still a greater amount that strongly supported the closure of the Rainey residents. Next slide, 10. There were six key elements that we wanted to also survey. We asked the respondents, we asked the survey takers what their perception of each was during the pilot. In all of them they -- their perception was that each were better. The ones that we anticipated either being about the same or considered worse was [1:58:42 PM] parking and congestion. And then one specific for the Rainey residents was about quality of life. As you can see, it's 47% said quality of life was better, while 30% said that it was worse and 23% said it was about the same. Next slide, 11. Of the survey respondents that we intercepted at a mac event, we wanted to make sure that we weren't negatively impacting people attending mac events. So we asked them the same question of how strongly they support they were mostly neutral to strokly supportive. We also wanted to ask whether or not it would change their willingness to attend future [1:59:44 PM] mac events. The majority, 84%, said it doesn't affect their decision. And 14% said they were more likely to return. The last slide, 12, is our summary of observations and next steps. APD has coordinated with us throughout the length of the pilot, and they provided a summary report for us, and overall, they concluded that monitoring crowds and closing Rainey street as needed based on pedestrian volumes would allow them the most flexibility. So based on their observations, it was obvious that on a Thursday night, it wasn't as crowded as a Thursday night on 6th street, so the closure might not be necessary, as well as depending on the time of the night, it may not be necessary to provide staff resources at a [2:00:54 PM] barricade. So our preliminary analysis within atd showed that mobility and safety were not negatively impacted. And based on the survey, there was an overall community support for the street closure. But as I mentioned, we're continuing to finalize the report doing additional analysis of the collected data, including comparing the before and during traffic counts as well as crash analysis of before, during and compared to other districts in Austin that have similar environments. And we'll continue to look at different ways to look at the survey results. So we'll be finalizing the report over the next couple months. We've kind of taken the approach right now that these initiatives will continue to operate internally, but largely not [2:01:56 PM] impact the neighborhoods during the covid-19 situation. So we'll find the most appropriate time to reach out to the stakeholders to make sure that we follow up on all of these results with them. So if there are any additional feedback, highlights that you all would like to see, or questions you need answered. >> Okay. Thank you very much, Cole. That was very helpful. Council member tovo wanted to ask me to let you know that she will have follow-up questions for you. She had to -- she was able to stay through the presentation, but had to leave for another meeting. But wanted to -- >> I'm actually back. >> Okay. I know you have questions, if you don't mind holding for a second. Let me see if any of the committee members have questions. [2:03:00 PM] Okay, go ahead council member tovo. >> Tovo: I can certainly wait. I have time now. >> Kitchen: I'm not seeing questions from anyone else. I can't see Allison and I can't see Jimmy. So if you all have questions, you'll need to unmute. >> I'm fine. >> Kitchen: Go ahead, council member tovo. >> Tovo: Okay. Thank you so much for the presentation. I appreciate it. I think what I'm -- I'm trying to better understand some of your data. I think the first questions I have are on page 6 of the slide, where talks about business volumes obviously did not decrease. And I just want to get some more information about how you measured that. Did you do that in conjunction with the Rainey street [2:04:02 PM] (indiscernible) Association or was that an observation? >> Yeah, that is the general observation with kind of anecdotal comments. However, we did meet with the business community to get their feedback, and they were -- they indicated that business was great during this time, that there was no voiced concerns from their clientele or their employees. One thing that we hope to do is actually download some data from the state to find out how sales volumes were for -- to be able to compare before and during conditions. >> Tovo: Thank you. I think that would be useful. On that same page, there's an observation that the streets remained clean. And I'm trying to understand [2:05:02 PM] whether that was kind of cleaner than average, or whether it was a concern that they would -- the streets would become unclean. How does that factor in here? How does that observation factor into this discussion? >> Well, I don't have the exact details on that, but the concern is certainly what happens when people are allowed to congregate on the streets in different conditions. There was no reported noticeable change or impact in the cleanliness of the street. That was also a concern of the mac, whether or not people parking in the parking lot, that otherwise would not normally park there, would also bring with it uncleanliness. [2:06:05 PM] >> Tovo: Thank you, chair, for letting me know there's kind of a short period for questions. Let me kind of cut to some of the -- some of my bigger ones. I have some micro level ones that I'll follow up with you about. It talks about, on page 12, one of the summary observations is the preliminary analysis suggests that mobility and safety were not negatively impacted. And since part of -- I mean, the main intent was to improve mobility and safety. I guess I'd like to understand whether in your estimation mobility and safety were improved. It's not clear to me how many accidents we tended to have in the past. I know we had at least one very serious one. So the figures about accidents, it's hard for me to understand whether that's an improvement or not. But overall, would you say that [2:07:07 PM] this made strides from your professional estimation in terms of improving safety and mobility, or was it neutral? >> Yeah, certainly there's -- there's certainly things that can happen during a test like this where you're moving certain levers around, and if you push one down in one area, it might come up in another area. So for instance, Rainey street itself within the closure, obviously an improved safety experience, you removed the vehicle/pedestrian conflicts. So that's an extreme success there. However, with that improvement comes the condition of what happens on the outside of the closure area. So that's actually where that non-cr 3 crash occurred on a Friday evening, on red river, approaching Davis street. So we have to understand, well, [2:08:09 PM] what went into that incident, would it have otherwise occurred. Similarly, people chose to drop off on the south end of the closure, around the Rainey and river street traffic circle. That created congestion and backups when people didn't use the curb to drop people off. So that could be -- looked at as actually a negative impact on mobility, because it moved the congestion that was occurring on Rainey street to the traffic circle. So we kind of have to look at them comprehensively, to be able to assess whether or not the overall results. However, I think the thing to point out is that within the street closure itself, that was a success. [2:09:12 PM] >> Tovo: Thank you. And we'll follow up with some of the residents, if it does appear -- I think you underscored this -- some of them in their surveys responded positively about its impact, but we'll follow up and get more detailed responses. Thank you for the report. Thank you, committee, for letting me sit in and ask questions. I'll probably speed off now. But thank you again. >> Kitchen: Thank you council member, tovo. Folks, we're going to move on to our last item, which is the street impact fee policy development presentation. Before we do that, we have one speaker on that item. And that is David king. So David, if you're listening, we can take your comments right now. >> Thank you. Can you hear me? >> Kitchen: Yes, we can hear you. >> Thank you, council member kitchen. Chair, vice chair, mayor pro tem [2:10:16 PM] and council members, thank you for your service and listening to my comments. The fee has been thoroughly vetd over the past five years. Please enact the fee as soon as possible to ensure that each development mitigates its proportional impact on traffic and transportation infrastructure. According to an Austin monitoring report last August, Cole pitton, Austin transportation division manager, indicated that the street impact fee per unit would fluctuate with the adopted growth predictions. He said if you think 125,000 units is too much, and that we need to make it fewer, then the fee would be increased over the number of units. Please ensure that Austin's adopted growth projections have been updated to reflect the impact of the covid-19 pandemic on the projected population and economic growth in Austin over the next five years. [2:11:18 PM] Please ensure that the transportation bond funds are not utilized to reduce, limit or supplant impact fees. Please establish clear and transparent criteria for all proposed reductions and street impact fees. Please ensure that the effective rate is set at 100% for non-residential uses and 100% for residential uses. The proposed affected rates and reductions will result in a net loss of over $574 million over 10 years. The proposed effective rate means that commercial development will only be required to pay for 50% of their impact on traffic. It also means that a luxury residential development would only be required to pay 35% of its impact on traffic. These developments could seek additional reductions of up to 75% in the fee. By providing a nominal amount of [2:12:19 PM] affordable housing. It doesn't make sense to set the impact fee at a level that is supposed to cover the impact, and then grant fees in massive reductions. It defeats the whole purpose of having a street impact fee if we give these big reductions from the get-go. And then allow additional reductions for providing nominal amount of affordable housing. Please ensure that street impact fees utilized in conjunction wi transit oriented investments for capital metro transit routes and services comply with federal transportation administration title 6 and do not result in disparate impacts on the community, communities of color, low-income families and people protected by the Americans with disabilities act. I want to say thank you to council members and your staff, you are also essential workers in this pandemic, and I [2:13:20 PM] appreciate the good hard work that you have all given to our city and to our committees and to our families and businesses here. Thank you for your proactive, deliberate, fact-based response to the covid- 19 pandemic. And thank you for listening to my comments. >> Kitchen: Thank you, Mr. King. So now we'll turn to the street impact fee briefing. We have until 3:00. I know that there is a lot of information here. And my colleagues will likely have questions. So let's get through it in an appropriate amount of detail, and then allow some time for questions. So thank you, guys. Do you want to proceed? >> Yes, this is Leann Miller with Austin transportation. Can you hear me? >> Kitchen: Yes. >> Great. I have about 24 slides. So I should be able to get through it. [2:14:20 PM] Fortunately or unfortunately I tend to talk quickly. So I'll go over it as fast as I can and I'm sure we'll come back to different items for questions. The slides are labeled with numbers, so that we can reference those and come back to them. But thank you for having me back. >> Kitchen: Thank you. >> -- To speak about the street impact fee. This is a project we've been working on for several years and I've been at mobility committee several times, and I'm happy to be present the draft recommendation and study results. On our second slide, just to cover what-I'm going to talk about today, the work today and prior actions that the council has taken as well as the advisory committee, what the maximum impact fee results are from the study, and the draft policy recommendation, I'll go over revenue projections that we've developed, that reflect those recommendations, and then talk about what the next steps are in enacting an impact fee. [2:15:21 PM] On the third slide, we are showing the -- you've seen this graphic before, the schedule of the impact fee study, recognizing we began this process back at the end of 2016 with the impact fee advisory committee, in the first phase of the study we developed service areas and land use assumptions, which are those growth projections. And then we moved into the second phase of developing a roadway capacity plan. This is the capital improvement plan for the impact fee. We did that in coordination with the Austin strategic mobility plan. So the planning process of the asmp allowed us to refine the projects that are included. Council heard from the community during a public hearing back in August of 2019, and took action to adopt the study assumptions. So the results of the first two [2:16:23 PM] phases of the study back in August. And then we moved into the third phase of the project which was calculating the maximum fee and then developing draft policy, which then will come back to council in the form of an ordinance for your consideration. On slide 4, we have a lot of different dates of council actions, just as a reminder of where we've been on this project, as well as actions that the impact fee advisory committee has taken. As you may remember, the committee is required by state law, chapter 295 of the Texas local government code, to advise the city on the development of the study, and then after an impact fee is in place, their role is to advise council on any needs to update the study, or on how the program is progressing. So that committee does that action for the water and wastewater impact fees that [2:17:24 PM] Austin water manages. And at their March meeting, the committee recommended approval of the impact fee study, that it was technically sound, and in accordance with state law. And at their April meeting, they recommended their policy and fee collection rates. So that's what we're going to go over with you today. On slide 5, we see, again, what the approved study assumptions were back from August 2019. You'll remember the 17 different service areas, those areas are necessary because state law constrains us to areas that are not more than six miles, essentially in diameter. So we have to kind of break up the city into areas that meet that requirement. And then we develop growth projections for each one of those areas, for residential and employment growth over a 10-year period. And 10 years is that time period [2:18:25 PM] that is designated in state statute. Then we developed the roadway capacity plan, again, in accordance with the asmp, and it includes new roadways, roadway expansions, access management projects, which is both a safety and mobility improvement, and then intersection improvements, whether they're geometric, improvement or signals. And I just want to note here that the roadway capacity projects also include the multi-modal elements of the roadways including sidewalks and bicycle facilities and the kind of street (indiscernible). So on slide 6, this is where we moved into that third phase of the study of calculating the maximum impact fee. The formula that's in the yellow box at the top of the slide really shows the calculation that was done. It's a very, kind of simplified version of the recoverable costs [2:19:25 PM] of the roadway capacity project. The dollar amount of those projects divided by the new demand from development. And so we did that calculation for each of the service areas. One thing to note about the recoverable costs of the roadway capacity plan, the little graphic in the center of the slide shows that of the entire roadway capacity plan, we're only able to recover a portion of it. And this is not to scale. We'll get to that in a few slides. But the recoverable portion is only that that can be associated with demand over 10 years. We can't use impact fees to pay for existing demand, or demand beyond the 10-year window. We also accounted for prior developer contributions. So those funds that have been provided to the city by development that has not yet been spent. And we conducted a credit calculation which is allowed by state law to account for future [2:20:28 PM] add valor em taxes for development and recovered the net interest on the debt. So adding for roadway projects and crediting back interest earned on that. That gets us to the maximum impact fee per service area. On slide 7, you'll see the service area map of the 17 different areas. The result of those calculations is a unique fee for each one, and they vary pretty significantly across the different areas based on the amount of growth, and the cost of projects and the amount of projects that are needed in each area. So we can refer back to this slide. I had a feeling this would be helpful for us to refer back to when we talk about the policy. On slide 8, we have here the differences, and those maximum fees can be seen in the chart, in the table in the upper right of the slide. [2:21:29 PM] We're showing different example land uses for the purposes of this presentation, to facilitate discussion on the fee rates. But there are many other land uses that are included in the study, and each have unique generation rates which affect the fee calculation. You can see the highest versus the lowest maximum fee varies greatly across the service areas. We're also showing in the table below that, the draft recommendation for the fee rate from the impact fee advisory committee, which was 50% of the maximum fee for non-residential land uses and 35% of the maximum fee for residential land uses. How they got to that recommendation, they considered whether or not to charge a flat rate across the entire city. So the same dollar amount per vehicle mile. While they decided not to do that, because they didn't want [2:22:30 PM] to arbitrarily reduce fees in areas with high infrastructure needs, so instead they went for a flat percentage. That 50% and 35% across all of the service areas. I think in certain cities, going with more of a flat rate, makes more sense when you have areas that are more homogeneous in the way they developed in their infrastructure needs. We've really had varying needs across the city. They also wanted to recognize the needs for housing in Austin and how important of an objective that is for this council and the city, and they wanted to balance the needs between mobility infrastructure and housing supply and affordability, so they further reduced the impact fees for residential to that 35% of the maximum. The result of that 35% for single-family is the median number of 33 of 7, is almost equal to the current rough [2:23:32 PM] proportionality calculation for a single-family home which is about $3,400. These rates do not account for potential reduction, which I'm going to talk about in a few minutes. They also could be offset by improvements that the developer would make. So for instance, if a development built the infrastructure, they would get an offset for their impact fee otherwise due. Which is one way that the impact fee incentivizes development to build that infrastructure when they're developing their project, which is a real benefit for the community because that infrastructure is then on the ground the minute the development has trips being generated. On slide 9, it's a bar chart showing the maximum fees and recommended rates across all 17 [2:24:32 PM] service areas. The gray bars show the maximum, while the Orange bars show the single-family homes and the blue bars represent that kind of house scale multi-family, of a townhome, duplex, accessory dwelling unit. The more intensive multi-family use, the lower the trip generation rate. So while you have more units, you have lower trip generation rates. Slide 10 shows an example of a 3,000-square-foot restaurant. Again, the green bars are the recommended rate, and the gray bars represent the maximum. You can see how the kind of bars are very similar in shape to the ones for housing, based on the fact that the maximums do differ across all the areas. And of course, the axis on the left is changing. [2:25:32 PM] On slide 11, this is a 10,000-square-foot office example. And the purple bars, again, indicate the recommended rate. And on slide 12, we have a 50,000 square foot retail development example where the yellow bars are the recommended rate with the gray being the maximum again. Very similar in form across all of the charts. Getting back to reductions, on slide 13, the committee considered some different reductions from that effective rate. We grouped these into two different categories technical reductions and policy reductions. Technical meaning that they actually directly result in trip production. So the first under technic nal is internal capture which occurs in mixed use development, where some of the trips that are [2:26:34 PM] generated stay within the development. We can see this if there's housing, and then retail uses, some of those -- some of the housing trips are going to the retail within the development. That recommendation would cap the reduction that for internal capture at 20%. The next technical reduction was for transportation demand management, utilize tdm strategies with a cap of 40% reduction from the effective rate and tdm strategies would be outlined in the transportation criteria manual. Then the policy reduction that's recommended is for affordable housing. And this is really an opportunity for the impact fee to support other city objectives beyond delivering transportation infrastructure. And then lastly, we have a maximum cumulative reduction, so that we're not, you know, adding th all up and they go over [2:27:34 PM] 100%. So on slide 14, this is draft language from the ordinance, from the draft ordinance we're currently working on for the internal capture in tdm reductions, noting those 20% and 40% caps, and the references to the land use equivalency table which is in the study and the transportation criteria manual for the source reductions. Slide 15 shows affordable housing reductions. So the impact fee advisory committee in their discussion about affordable housing felt that the fee reductions should align with current city policies, but deferred to city staff to develop the draft ordinance language. They, like me, are not affordable housing experts, so they defer to them. So I've been working with our land development code team as well as the neighborhood housing, and community development department, to [2:28:35 PM] develop this recommendation. Atd's proposal for affordable housing would be to allow for a reduction when 5% or more of the units are income restricted affordable, as verified by the housing director and that the development is utilizing tdm measures by the transportation director, with the reduction of up to 75% of the impact fee. So we're still working on the language of this recommendation, and would be very interested in council's thoughts on that. Slide 16 shows the reductions of the cumulative for 60%, except for those developments that meet the affordable housing reduction, whereas the maximum cumulative reduction would be 75%. And that the burden of proof is on the applicant to show that they qualify for these reductions. Slide 17 summarizes the recommendation in one table. The effective rate, the [2:29:36 PM] reductions, and then also the effective date. So the committee's recommendation was for the ordinance to be effective the day that it is adopted, with the collection of fees for being not occurring for one year. That one-year grace period is required in state law for properties that have been previously platted before the ordinance effective date. However, in this case, the committee elected to extend that grace period to all developments. That would allow one year before any impact fees would be collected. In the case of an ordinance going into effect and then someone coming in to plot the next day, they could potentially be assessed fees at that time, so they wanted to give everyone that one-year grace period. Slide 18, we're moving into the costs of the roadway capacity [2:30:37 PM] plan or the cip for the impact fee and the revenue projections that we would expect based on these fee recommendations. So slide 19 shows the total cost of the roadway capacity plan in the pie chart. So only, as I mentioned before, only a portion of the roadway capacity plan is able to be recovered through impact fees. The blue pieces of the pie chart show what can't be recovered through the impact fee, because it's the cost to meet existing demand, so the traffic today, and its cost to serve growth beyond the 10-year window. So that reduces the amount that can be recovered to just that Orange portion. The small peach sliver on the left is that credit that I mentioned, based on prior contributions that haven't yet been spent, and the add valor [2:31:38 PM] em, and the projected revenue over 10 years. The pie chart on the left shows the maximum fee as determined by the study, what would result if we were to chart 100%, the maximum. What's on the right is showing the projected revenue from the current policy recommendation. That dark purple slice represents the reduction in revenue from the 50% and 35% rate for non-residential and residential respectively. And the light purple piece shows the anticipated reductions from tdm, internal capture and affordable housing. And those are based on some estimates that I will show in a couple of slides. But this just gives you an idea of how revenue may differ based on how we set those rates, and the reduction. One thing I want to point out about the reductions is that while we would be reducing [2:32:39 PM] impact fee revenue, we would also be seeing positive developments that utilize internal capture that are being mixed use developments that are implementing transportation, and whether it's multi-modal infrastructure, or building bicycle parking or reducing parking, or having showers. So those are positives that we also want to see as well as affordable housing, so that's the benefit that we would be receiving for those reductions. So that's definitely a discussion for council to have. On slide 20, this is the exact same information, except in percentage format. So you can see 56% of the roadway capacity plan is recoverable within 10 years, with impact fees over 10 years, the maximum fee, and about 8.9% is when we go with the draft recommended fees. On slide 21, this is just kind [2:33:40 PM] of the textual version of what you've seen in the charts, with the 50% and 35% residential rates, the city would expect 859 million over 10 years, or about 86 million per year. That does include the reductions. We made some guesstimates about those reductions to provide this revenue projection of 17% for tdm, 15% for internal capture and 35% for redevelopment, because with redevelopment, we can only charge for the delta, between the existing use and new use in terms of trips generated. And also for affordable housing incentives. That's how we get to the 28.5 million per year, or 285 million over 10 years. Just a note to compare to the next largest city in Texas that has impact fees, the 28.5 is about twice the revenue that Fort Worth sees from their [2:34:42 PM] program annually. As of July of 2019, the program had brought in about 170 million since its inception in 2008, to equate to about $15 million a year. That's split, of course, between actual fee revenue and offsets, or that infrastructure that's been built by developers. So they account for the cost of that infrastructure that's been implemented as well. On slide 22, now talking about next steps, what we're going to continue to do is provide information on the draft ordinance and policy that's being discussed to stakeholders. We provided the number of webinars over the last several weeks to some of the groups that you see on the slide. And then others that are coming up next week. And we are briefing you all today at mobility committee. You have an item on your may 7th agenda, a public hearing for the impact fee. [2:35:42 PM] It's proposed for June 11th. And then, of course, with an ordinance approval, you would have multiple readings, and public input on that. Going to slide 23, for anyone who's watching, and council members, for you, as you're looking into more information on the study, austintexas.gov/has all of our information, including the study report, from one-pagers that are easy quick reference, and there's a way to sign up for e-mails, so your constituents are receiving updates from us on milestones in the project. And there's also a link there to go to the impact fee advisory committee page where information about their meetings is documented. With that, I'm happy to take any questions. I also have on the line, of course, our -- Cole kitton, but [2:36:44 PM] also our consultant Jess Whitten who can maybe answer some of your questions. So chair? >> Kitchen: Thank you very much. That was a really helpful presentation. And thank you for doing it in the time that you did. This is very helpful. So let me just turn to the committee now to see if people have questions. I can see everybody. I cannot see Allison. So council member Flannigan, if you would like to go first, go ahead. >> Flannigan: Yeah, I think we need to talk more about this percent reduction. And I'm kind of struggling with what you're laying out in those pie charts. And why the recommendation at 50%, and 35%. It just seems like we have pretty big needs, and [2:37:45 PM] (indiscernible). >> I think -- I don't think that was a rhetorical question. I'll attempt to answer it back on slide 19, if we want to look again at the pie chart. So what you are seeing is the reduction of 50%, and 35%, and I hope that the committee will come to speak at the public hearing to give you a little bit more information about how they came to their recommendation. We'll also submit to you their official comments for how they came to this recommendation. But the 50% generally reflects growth and the community overall, sharing the cost of infrastructure. I think in the way that the system operates today, most of -- or a lot of infrastructure needs have been borne by the community at large and a portion by development. And I think there are a lot of developments, especially smaller developments that have not in the past, have not contributed to transportation infrastructure. That's slowly been changing over [2:38:45 PM] the last few years as our development review process has improved. But this would be a way for existing community to help with areas of the city that have been underinvested in the past and not put that entire cost on to new development. While again balancing the need between infrastructure and affordability, and how we could implement this program in a way that transitions most smoothly into an impact fee. Again, I'll just mention that comparison to the current proportionality calculation, matches the median for single-family under this proposal. >> Kchen: Jimmy, do you have -- I'm sharing the concerns that you just raised. To me, I think you may have just answered a related question that I had, which is, how much do we collect right now, if you look at it in the aggregate. [2:39:47 PM] If I heard you right, you're saying that we collect [lapse in audio] Of maximum right now? Is that what you're saying? >> I'm sorry, it went out when you said the percentage. We don't have a fee right now. So I think -- this is a discussion as we've been working with the housing department on the affordability impact statement that would come to you all with this ordinance recommendation of what that -- what the difference is, really, between what's happening today and what would happen under an impact fee proposal. It's a little bit difficult for us to get our arms around what is happening today, because it is so case-by-case, and it's really evolved over the last several years. So I think that's something we could definitely try to quantify for you. So that we can better represent the difference. So from my experience, most developments do not come close -- or, you know, go [2:40:48 PM] over -- definitely they'll go over, but don't necessarily come close to that rough proportionality cap that we have, that we've used to calculate whether or not -- whether the development regulations are roughly proportional and fair to the development community. So we're in most cases not reaching that point today. And this essentially is a more comprehensive area by area rough proportionality calculation for the entire city. Instead of having a citywide average for trip length, we're more focused on the specific project, and the needs of the specific areas. >> Kitchen: Jimmy, did you have a follow-up question, or no? I see you're thinking, I guess. >> Flannigan: Are you talking to me? >> Kitchen: Yes, I'm sorry. >> Flannigan: Somehow your audio [2:41:49 PM] cuts out at exactly the right words. >> Kitchen: Sorry. Did you finish asking your questions? >> Flannigan: I'm thinking other folks can ask. >> Kitchen: Council member alter, I think you raised your hand? >> Alter: Yes, I share the concerns that were just raised, and I'm still kind of puzzling over that. I like the concept if we're going to give reduction, that we're giving reductions for things that we want to incentivize as a concept. I'm not sure sort of about the amount, and sort of how this compounds a whole bunch of other stuff that we're giving, in particular situations, or how little we may be getting. Say, in the housing or whatever. I just -- I need to see some numbers in a different way for that. So I'm still puzzling through what they said. But I did want to ask if you'd [2:42:52 PM] run this with some of the cases that you've given us, I think at the last time to help us understand how things would have been different. And you gave them to us with 100%. To see, you know, how we would -- what we would be getting in terms of funding now versus then, like with these specific scenarios. >> Right. That's a good question, council member. I don't have those slides for you, but it's definitely something that we can provide. And we can can post on the website. And for anyone who hasn't seen those, we looked at some past developmentsened what their transportation mitigation was and compared that to the maximum based on the study results, and then we compared that to collection rates in other Texas cities, to see how did Austin fall and how did our study compare. But we can go to the next step and show how the draft recommendation compares to those [2:43:52 PM] amounts, yes. >> Alter: I think that would be really helpful for me. Was someone else talking? >> Kitchen: I think that was Jeff Whitaker trying to chime in as well. >> Yeah, we've preliminarily run some of those numbers, and I think this affected your previous question that was asked was, how did the committee come to this. They were looking at those charts in comparison to other cities and what we're doing now, and on those comparisons, the short draw that I think was drawn from it is small developments less than 2,000 trips today don't contribute, it would be an impact to them. Medium sized developments, we had a 55-000 square foot offset, it was relatively the same. And the large developments we saw different impacts. The dollar amount that were [2:44:53 PM] shown under this policy is quite a bit larger than what was under the previous policy. But we can get you those exact numbers at a later date. >> And I think that that's something -- >> Kitchen: -- Versus regular zoning. >> I think the answer is it would not -- Jeff, I think the answer is that it does not -- it is not affected by whether or not it's a pud versus a regular zoning. But it would still be calculated and assessed and collected at building permit. >> Yeah. The zoning and pud, they're stuff that the subdivision in the plotting stage collecting the building permit. Anything in the pud or platting stage, it would be an offset to their fees when they paid, but they would still be treated the same as another development somewhere. [2:45:54 PM] >> Kitchen: I'm going to -- >> One -- >> Kitchen: I'm going to have to play with some of those reductions to understand them. >> The response about the affordability impact statement and when we were looking at existing, we've been going back and trying to look at different subdivisions, and middle housing and some of the recent developments and what their contributions have been. It's a little difficult, because in some cases the answer is nothing, and so the charge of a fee is a complete 100% impact to those developments. So developing the impact statement, that's something that is being considered about what is the impact and how is that negative or positive with the city overall, as the costs then of infrastructure, either that infrastructure doesn't get built, or it is built later, at a time when the city can [2:46:54 PM] actually afford to build that infrastructure through bond programs, or other funding sources. >> Kitchen: Council member Ellis? >> Ellis: Can you explain to me how, if you have a particular structure that is a mix of commercial and residential, how you figure out what potential reduction there might be with both uses on site? >> Absolutely. So the calculation of the fee will be done through kind of a work sheet that would be available online. So it would be based on the land use, and the square footage, or the dwelling unit, in the case of residential. So in a situation of a mixed-use development, you would just add them all together. And that's how you would come to the fee. >> Ellis: That's helpful. I'm interested in the conversation around if we decide to do something like overlays, like if we want to encourage affordable housing, especially [2:47:56 PM] if it's in line with our blueprint goals. I think that would be an interesting conversation to try to appropriately weight structures that are (indiscernible) Planning methods versus other types, to make sure that we're using this to calibrate the types of development we want to see and the types of locations we want to see. And I think I remember a conversation from a long time ago, correct me if I'm wrong, about access to public transportation. I think it's really helpful to think about the impacts of certain development on public transportation, and the way that relates to parking, minimums and maximums. And so I know you really want to make sure that you're not undoing the amount of productivity you're able to do with a street impact fee, but I just feel like we had a conversation months ago that maybe touched on that and I feel like I'm a little not up to speed on that at the moment. [2:48:56 PM] Is that a conversation we've had previously? >> Council member, you're correct, it was. We've addressed the access to public transportation two different ways. One is in the actual study. We included the amount of space within a service area that is adjacent to a high-frequency transit line, and reduced -- showed a different mode split essentially for those areas. We kind of took that reduced demand because we think that more people will be able to ride transit in those areas, took that into account in the study itself. So that's reflected in the maximum. And with the reductions for transportation demand management, things that are done to support transit ridership would also be incentivized through the tdm reductions. And we're still working out exactly what all those things are. But yes, that's how we've [2:49:56 PM] addressed the transportation. >> Ellis: That's helpful. And is there any existing data on cities of our similar size, or other big cities in Texas, if that information is available, I would love to be able to take a look at that too. >> Absolutely. We can provide information on other cities. There are some central Texas cities that have recently adopted ordinances, obviously smaller than Austin, and fort Worth being the second largest city. I know San Antonio has also been watching our progress and may be interested as well as, I think El Paso. And Jeff is working in other cities as well, and can bring that knowledge to the policy discussion. >> Ellis: Great. Thank you. >> Kitchen: Mayor pro tem, did you have any questions? >> You've addressed them all. Thank you. >> Kitchen: I have another question then, on the slide that [2:50:57 PM] talks about affordable housing, I'd just be curious about how the 5% was arrived at, and maybe that was in hchd. If I'm reading it right, it says an applicant who sets aside at least 5% of the total units, and utilizes tdm, can request a reduction of up to 75%, which means if I'm reading it right, they would only be paying 25% of the fee. So I just have -- just on an initial look at that, 5% of total units is income restricted, seems low to me, to get that kind of advantage. And so I would just need to understand why 5%? Can you all speak to that? Or is that something we need to speak to our housing department on? >> Yeah, I can speak to that a little bit, based on my conversations with housing, and [2:51:57 PM] really where that 5% came from. It was the idea of that being kind of the gateway or the entrance for any affordable housing program in the city, and that it would be a way for affordable housing to be incentivized across the city. On-site units. I think -- I agree we definitely need to calibrate that 5% to the 75% number and exactly how we get to those numbers. It's something we should talk about. But I think the idea was, we originally had something that was drafted that called for much higher amounts of affordable housing, and we felt at that point, it would apply to very few developments that actually are achieving that level of affordability and we wanted to -- the idea was to incentivize more development to include at least some proportion of their development of housing. But happy to here y'all's thoughts more about how we calibrate those numbers to make the most sense under this [2:52:58 PM] program. >> Kitchen: Well, I would want to calibrate. I see that. But it just feels like they're providing too much of a reduction for too little. That's just my initial reaction, and would want to talk about that more. And maybe it's a certain percent reduction at 5%, a certain percent reduction -- et cetera. Okay. Let's see. Are there other questions that people have? Other feedback you'd like to give them at this point? Okay. I have one last (indiscernible). Tell me your timeline again. I think I heard you say it's uncertain when it will come to council. >> The public hearing would be [2:53:59 PM] proposed for June 11th, and then council's meeting, I think, next -- at the end of July and into August, so that's when we would assume we would come back for those ordinance readings. Assuming that the public hearing would be potentially left open through the summer, and we would continue to get feedback from the community and provide information on the policy draft. >> Kitchen: Okay. I know this is to last well into the future. So I'm not certain if there's any kind of impact on these, you know, from the economic impact we're experiencing now from covid-19. Have y'all asked that question, or thought about that question? Or is it even relevant from your perspective? >> We have talked about that. And it did come up in a conversation that the advisory committee had with their consideration of what is an [2:55:00 PM] appropriate fee in the economic environment, and what development may be doing over the next several years. And they felt that the one-year grace period really allowed for the development community and the city to be organized around the program, and that also that kind of five-year required update would allow us to reflect any changes to the land use and growth projections that we've previously developed. So that kind of update window could be moved up sooner if you felt like we missed the mark on the land use productions as we see the impacts on covid-19. >> Kitchen: Thank you. Council member alter? >> Alter: I'm just going to say that I would like to continue this conversation. I'm finding that over this webex thing, it's been really challenging to digest this, and to really think it through with [2:56:02 PM] so many numbers and different pieces here. So I'd like to continue the conversation, and I'm a little bit -- is there also somewhere it's written up to be on the presentation? >> What was that last question that you asked? >> Is there someplace it's written up beyond the presentation? >> The recommendations of the draft ordinance is not published yet. We hope to get that published in the next few weeks. I'm working with a lot of departments to incorporate their comments. The study itself is online, and -- but I would say that the policy recommendation from the committee is mostly captured within slides, and then also will be presented in their comments. There will be a memo that will come to council for that public hearing, or before the public hearing with their comments. >> Alter: And when it went to [2:57:04 PM] the committee that made the recommendation, what did staff recommend relative to where we came out? How did that align? >> We had provided a couple of different recommendations, as I mentioned, at the percentage rate versus flat rates, to show the kind of pros and cons of different options. But we didn't present to them, you know, a staff recommendation, and then their response back was an alternative recommendation, they really developed the recommendation based on, you know, discussing with us, and seeing kind of the comparison to other cities, and really just trying to balance all of the objectives between providing infrastructure and affordability. >> Alter: Can you send me any materials or links to the appropriate video for that, if we wanted to dive in a little bit more? >> Absolutely. Yeah. >> Alter: Thank you. >> Kitchen: Yes, I'd like to see that, too, if you would send it [2:58:04 PM] to the committee, that would be great. All right. Any other questions on this item? Thank you all very much. This is very helpful. And council member alter, we can consider, if it makes sense in August, depending on the timing, if people want to do it at that time, we can have more conversation about the policy use. So we'll come back to that. I'll see how that fits with the timing and ask everybody what they want to do. So our last item is just future items. Does anyone want to say anything? You can always send them to me. Any comments? >> Do you think we're going to need (indiscernible). [2:59:04 PM] Your audio keeps cutting out, Ann. I don't know what's going on. I can't hear you. I see your lips moving. If we're at the end, that's fine. We can talk about it later. (Indiscernible). Poor Ann, your audio isn't happening. Since I'm vice chair, I think without any debate, we can adjourn our meeting of the mobility committee. Thanks, everybody. [Meeting adjourned at 12:59 P.M.]