Mobility Committee (MOBC) meeting Transcript – 5/11/2023 Title: ATXN-1 (24hr) Channel: 1 - ATXN-1 Recorded On: 5/11/2023 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 5/11/2023 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. [1:07:07 PM] it is now. 1:07 P.M. I am chair Paige Alyssa, the mayor pro tem of Austin. I am the chair of the mobility committee and we are here at Austin city hall. May 11th, 2023. Wanted to give a couple of updates as we get started into this meeting. So we typically for the committee meetings only have spots for five people to be able to speak and it's general communication. So since a lot of the items that we're doing are briefings, we don't typically have people sign up on every individual item. The way that you would see in a normal council meeting. But because I know there's a couple items of interest that people had, we expand that to ten people. We will still give you all three full minutes to go ahead and complete your remarks. I would ask that they stay pertinent to mobility because that's the jurisdiction of this committee and try to make sure that people are focusing mostly on just mobility aspects in Austin, because there might not be folks able to receive comment or be able to take notes on other situations that people might have questions or concerns [1:08:07 PM] about that are outside the purview of our transportation and public works department or capital delivery projects. So on that note, it is bike month, so our may committee meeting, we really like to try to focus as much as we can on bicycle mobility, infrastructure. I am chair Ellis. I'm joined by vice chair qadri council member Kelly. We have council member Harper Madison joining us virtually and we have council member Ryan alter joining us and council member Fuentes will arrive here as soon as she is able to. So we have ten people signed up to speak. We're going to try to group people by similar topic. So we're going to do our best to try to get people not knowing exactly which topics people are signed up on. I'm going to take the first speaker, which is Terry Adams. Do you want to come speak to us? Terry . Is Terry here? She left. All right, let's Tanya pane, do you [1:09:10 PM] want to tell us which item it is that you're wanting to speak on . I I don't see her. She's not here either. How about Karen blizzard? Welcome you'll have three minutes. And are we able to run the timer during this meeting? I know we are. Christopher parks, our normal liaison, is not with us today. So you may need to give us a little bit of grace just to make sure we have all the bells and whistles in order. Timer is ready to go. All right. Go ahead. Proceed thank you and good afternoon. I'm Karen blizzard and I'm speaking today to introduce a new nonprofit organization, Ann zilker 351 in reference to the 351 acres of zilker park. Our tagline is every acre for every one because zilker is a metropolitan park that belongs to all of Austin, bringing with it mobility challenges. Whether you live in the zilker neighborhood or in Windsor hills circle C Eid Cesar Chavez northwest hills or far [1:10:12 PM] south Austin. The group's mission is to honor, preserve and enhance the natural, cultural and recreational treasures of the park for all to honor. Andrew zilker statement that zilker metropolitan park quote, ought to belong to all the people of Austin, close quote. Zo 351 envisions a park that welcomes all visitors to experience the natural beauty vibrant programs and recreational opportunities and become stewards of the park for current and future generations. Zo 351 was formed in 2022 by the zilker collective impact working group. 14 nonprofit organizations and one vendor who operate within zilker park. They include zilker botanical garden, friends of Barton springs pool, Barton springs conservancy, zilker theater productions and hill country conservancy, trail of lights foundation, Austin parks foundation, Ann Austin sunshine camps girl scouts of central Texas zilker cabin rowing dock, the trail conservancy, ABC kite festival, Waterloo disc golf club Umlauf sculpture garden and museum and [1:11:13 PM] friends of the Austin nature and science center. These long standing and beloved organizations are part of the fabric of zilker park and of Austin. For decades they have served millions of park visitors by providing recreational amenities programs. The free summer musical and summer camps without the barrier of cost, to name just a few. With their long standing history, these groups provided input to the vision plan through the community engagement process in support of some aspects of the plan and with suggestions for improvement . Burt areas of support included multi-modal mobility improvements, bringing equitable access to the park along with ecological uplift of 92 acres in the park with support from leadership. Austin and Austin. Together these groups came together to discuss whether and how a nonprofit might be formed to represent all of zilker park. After a year and a half of discussions and planning, zilker 351 was formed as a nonprofit organization with a community board of directors and a 15 member advisory board. It's [1:12:14 PM] worth noting that zilker 351 has no desire, plans or interest in running, privatizing or managing zilker park. The group has not yet formed a relationship with pard but intends to do so through paths. Community partnership program to determine how best we can support and supplement parks park in the future. Thank you. Thank you. All right. The list I am working off of, it looks like bill bunch is signed up on the Barton springs road bridge. Good afternoon, Ann chair Ellis, members of the committee and council, thank you so much for your service to the community. I'm bill bunch. I'm executive director for save our springs alliance and speaking to the road bridge and the related Eid park plan. We very much are in strong favor of preserving the historic bridge over Barton creek. If you've ever walked or [1:13:14 PM] swam or paddled under that bridge, you know how beautiful it is. The original bridge is from the 1920s. It was in expanded and very nicely in. 1946. It's in solid shape. It's a 200 year bridge. And we think it really should be preserved. I passed out and you should each have a letter from civil engineer from decades, Tom Kamm , about how the bridge is in currently excellent condition. Ann there might be some questions that are not answered . Eid but the picture that the staff public works has been painting that it's deteriorated and that it needs to be basically re the top decking blown up with a series of minor explosions and completely rebuilt is simply not accurate, or at least the science that we've seen does not support that. Mr. Kim is not some [1:14:16 PM] outside power. He builds bridges for the city of Austin and has for decades and other cities. And there's a two page summary of his work masters and civil engineering Singh from the 70s at UT. This is what he does for a living, literally. So zo it is national register bridge. It was not included in the zilker park plan, which makes no sense because the park plan is calling for four other bridges. There's not been coordination Ann here. The park plan in the draft plan misleads and misrepresents that the park plan, the draft from the city's consultants protects all of the contributes features of the national register historic district of zilker park . That is false because this this bridge is part of that historic district, a contributing feature. It needs to be saved. Also a critical point that you start from is [1:15:17 PM] that that the only bond funding that was approved in the last package buried was for engineering Singh design and analysis. And it specifically was looking at rehabilitate Singh the bridge or building a new one. So there's no voter mandate to replace this bridge with this giant ugly highway standard issue highway bridge, which I think you'll see pictures of from staff and there's no money for it. It incredibly expensive. We can fix the bridge for much cheaper and avoid all the environmental damage that would come with that a district additional construction. Thank you for your consideration. Thank you for your comments. The next speaker I have is Mike kennerty and then after that will be Roy Whaley. [1:16:17 PM] Afternoon council members, thank you for your time today. I'm Mike kennerty. I'm here as a 50 plus long user of zilker park and a board member of Barton springs conservancy and the advocacy chair for friends of Barton springs pool regarding the mobilities committee purpose for addressing land use matters concerning mobility and transportation modes. I'm here to speak on the vision plan's mobility provisions, which we believe make zilker metropolitan park the welcoming and accessible park for the entire community. As you know, the plan's provisions in this respect were approved by the bicycle and pedestrian advisory council and also the urban transportation commission. Ann and I just wanted to highlight some of the aspects of the plan that we think are great improvements to the mobility. One is there are five new bike or ped bridges connecting either over the lake or over the creek to improve mobility in the park . There's an impressive and appealing nature or land bridge to provide a safe and hopefully very natural crossing over Barton springs road. There are also an extensive trail system [1:17:17 PM] of 6.9 miles of new trails in in the park that again enhance the mobility within zilker. The plan also includes a robust and exciting transit option, which is part of the aspect of the plan and a lot of the community , including at one point the neighborhood community, thought that the transit piece of this was actually ideal. But this is just one small piece of all of the mobility solution. Burns there is also some proposals to improve mobile rapid transit connections with external shuttles from the park to Lamar or if project connect comes online to one of those stops. There Shaw. So that would be an improvement as well. But as a direct benefit of all of these improvements to the plan for mobility, we also can achieve, at least according to the plan's numbers, 92 acres of ecological improvement and restoration in the park. And you may wonder how those things work together. The basic idea seems to be that if we can conserve, validate the existing surface parking, a lot of which is actually really close to Barton creek and lady [1:18:18 PM] bird lake. And if we can consolidate that into a smaller footprint of anywhere from one to possibly three bridges, that would be phased in over time. The vision plan is achieving that increase in ecological health. You can actually pull back altogether about nine acres of impervious cover according to the numbers of the plan. And at least that is kind of how the parking piece fits with the transit piece, fits with the biking piece. So there's a lot here. It's a lot of complicated moving parts. There's a lot of different interests that have to be resolved. I really want to commend the city's design team for their very hard work to try to listen to all of the input and try to come up with a solution that meets maybe not anyone's perfect answer, but a really good, solid answer to plan for the sustainable future of zilker park. Thank you very much. Thanks for your comments. We have Roy Whaley next Wright and I also have David Weinberg signed up. Are you on the similar topic of zilker? Okay you'll be next. Howdy y'all. My [1:19:20 PM] name is Roy Whaley. I'm the conservation Ann chair for the Austin regional group of the Sierra club. Ann and to remind you, nobody's car wants to go to the park. People want to go to the park, and we need to find a way to get people, not cars, to the park. And that will mean a robust transit system include Singh, a shuttle that runs from nearby offsite parking as well as the rest of the city. Because we want everyone, no matter where you live in Austin, to be able to come to zilker park. And why is zilker so special? Barton springs, which is not mentioned in this plan Ann and not everyone goes for Barton springs, but zilker is a wonderful park. But we've got wonderful parks across Austin and when I look at 30 million for a land bridge, the millions of dollars for parking garages, I see that we could be spreading this money to all the parks in [1:20:22 PM] Austin and to me that creates a real equity. It's not just being able to go to the park zilker park, but it's being able to have a great park nearby and hopefully within walking distance. But we are particularly concerned about the $30 million land bridge and moving the zilker hillside theater. There the paramount theater. Seats 1280 people, I believe was the number I read at and it does just fine. You have a lot of people show up for presentations there. You can have the same thing at the existing hillside theater that we've already sunk a lot of money into and it needs more Shaw. But that's what we need rather than to take out over a dozen trees, some heritage trees to create a land bridge that will scar the park during [1:21:23 PM] construction. It will slow traffic. I'm not even sure how they will get traffic through during this construction, but we need to. Instead of $30 million, there, let's put $30 million into a dove springs. Let's put it into walnut creek, let's put it into the some of the areas way north that get very little attention. So let's spend this money more wisely than what this vision plan is proposing. We have an alternative vision. And there is a coalition working on that. I want to make sure that it's not seen that the reality it's not a group of grumbling neighbors. This is people from across the city, Sierra club represents people from across the city and Sierra club members are concerned about spending this amount of money for zilker when they don't see that much wrong with zilker. $30 million [1:22:24 PM] for a land bridge. $120 million for another crossing. Thank you very much. Thank you for your comments and for wearing your bike helmet. David Weinberg. Good afternoon. Council members. I wanted to make a couple quick points about parking garages. First of all, it really would have been nice if the parks board later in this month wore the council in July or whenever the vote comes up, had a vision plan in front of them that was, as in living in the world of the practical and the in the polgar rebel. I think building a multi-story under ground parking garage, a nine iron shot from Barton springs is something that exists more in the world of science fiction Ann than it does in practicality. See, here's the second point I want to make about parking garages is over. I don't know how many months and I don't know how spending, how [1:23:25 PM] much taxpayer money the design workshop seemed to fail to ask the public an up down question do you want parking garages in zilker park? Well, they didn't. And you can ask them later this afternoon why? Perhaps. But somebody else did. And you next week will be hearing about and seeing a poll which asks specifically about parking garages. And with that poll will say is parking garages in zilker park have no support in the city of Austin? Not in east Austin, not in west Austin. There is not a single council district where parking garages in zilker park have a modicum of support. Not a single one. So zo when looking at this plan in terms of mobility, let's a look at what can we actually do there and B, let's also be listening to the public on what they want to see in the park. And that does not include food, parking garages. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Have Terry Adams or [1:24:28 PM] Tanya Paine arrived? I'm guessing they're on a similar topic. Mok. Before we move on, all right, let's go with Julio Gonzalez. Altamirano. Welcome. You have three minutes. Thank you. So today we're going to talk about little numbers that end up being very important for the big numbers related to project connect. We're going to talk about cost benchmarks for lrt before we look at the data, I want to tell you a little bit about the data. The data is based on 44 rail projects in the us and Canada. Of course, we adjusted for purchasing power parity and inflation and we did include the figures from the memo released on may third by atp about their costs. If you look at all 44 projects butts, you see that the two most productive high ridership proposals from atp are sort of in the middle median. However if [1:25:29 PM] you dive closer to and look at only those projects that have. 65% or more at grade guideway, the cost in millions per mile for our most productive projects is somewhat high. That doesn't mean expensive curve, it just means high. Another way to look at this is to look at just a subsample of the projects for cities that are most like us. Charlotte, Houston, Ann and phenix. And again, the cost per mile in us dollars for 2023 ends up being about 125 million Ann. Now just because something has a high cost per mile does not mean that it is expensive or unproductive. In this scatter plot, what you are looking at is the cost per mile on the X axis [1:26:30 PM] and the ridership on the Y axis . There's very good news in that nltc pv is a blockbuster ridership project, but if we use the 40% contingency and the cost that have been given to us by atp, it is still a high cost per mile project. A different way of looking at productive equity is to look at what does it cost to get a thousand riders in terms of millions. And if you look at this sample, again, our projects are somewhat more expensive than some of our peers that doesn't mean that it's expensive. It just means that we need to make it productive. It also means that it's possible to, if we press on costs, squeeze out a few more miles and there's about 2.8 miles between 38th and crestview station pushing and asking for the feasible Katy of [1:27:34 PM] what it would cost to get to crestview station for 30 ultra yellow jacket should be a priority. Another priority to make things more productive is to look at the small dots and try and pack ridership there so that our cost per ridership matches what our cost per mile benchmark would require. Thank you. Thank you for your comments and I know it seems like you may have been cut off. If you could email us or make sure we have the information, if there was anything further. And that goes for everybody. We're more than happy to take a look at it. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you . Emily Crowe. Good afternoon. Mobility committee members. My name is Emily Crowe. I am a native austinite Ann and you've probably seen me at some of the public safety committee meetings [1:28:35 PM] . I have been doing a deep dive on many of the different committees and councils and their plans regarding safety and mobility and transportation in Austin. And it seems that all of them have the same common theme of affordability, accessibility, safety for all, in conjunction together to try to reduce the amount of cars on the road. So I just would like to make you aware of the risks of the lack of affordable and safe transportation between Rainey street and east Riverside for patrons and service industry workers. During peak hours, Uber rides from Rainey street to Riverside cost anywhere from 75 to $100. If you're a waiter or a barback, you're not going to be able to pay that every night. So this ride normally costs 8 to $10. And due to the surge pricing, most industry workers and patrons choose to walk scooter or bike from Rainey street to east Riverside and the large crowds of people trying to get home via car alternatives increases the risk of accidents from midnight to 3 A.M. As paths and roads are not well lit, cameras are not present, [1:29:35 PM] distracted tire drivers plague the streets and judgment may be impaired in opportune. Criminals do await to mitigate the risk of additional accidents and violent crime. I'm requesting the mobility committee in conjunction with the public safety committee, urban transportation commission, bicycle advisory council, pedestrian advisory council and capital metro to prioritize, prioritize options for safe, affordable transport Ann from Rainey street to Riverside during peak entertainment district hours. There is currently a night owl Riverside shuttle that runs from sixth street to east Riverside. But that bus stop is a 21 minute walk away from Rainey street. So that really prevents it from being a resource to patrons and workers in that area. I recommend a shuttle bus running from 4 P.M. Until 3 A.M. That will improve safety but also move Austin towards successfully recognizing the goals outlined in vision zero. And many of the other plans I found online. These plans all stated that their goal is to build a safe, multi- modal transportation network in Austin and I have a [1:30:36 PM] plan for the route, but I think I'm going to run out of time so I can email that to you. But I humbly make these requests on behalf of the families of the young men who can no longer speak for themselves. My brother Joshua, Alvin crow, Jason. John martin Gutierrez, John honey. Cliff Axtell. Jake Waltrip. Randy luxford. Luis Ramirez. Fernando Ortiz. Santiago Becerra . Julio Santos. The third. I really do appreciate your time. I understand how difficult it is and how you are inundated with requests and complaints. I am a nine year veteran, Ann hoa president, and I'm only doing it because no one in the community will step up so I really appreciate your time, your and hope that we can all work together to improve the city, the city of Austin and make our streets safe. Thank you so much , miss crow. Yeah, I just I just want to thank you for your advocacy and, you know, I've seen you at the public safety committee meetings and, you know, hearing about everything, the advocacy you've done since your brother's passing. Could you send that to my office? And if you're going to be here until the end of the meeting or if [1:31:38 PM] you're heading out, I can quickly grab you outside and I can get some of this stuff from you. Yeah, I'm sorry. I have to go back to work. I work for Alzheimer's disease. Fair enough. We're trying to create a treatment for it, so I have to get back to work. But yes, I'll meet you outside. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Is Elizabeth Gonzalez here. I don't see Elizabeth Gonzalez. Last call for Terry Adams or Tanya Payne. Looks like that concludes our general communication portion of this meeting. We will now move to item one approval of the minutes of the mobility committee meeting held on March 2nd, 2023 and April 6th, 2023. Make a motion to approve the minutes. Council member Kelly makes the motion. I have a second by council member harper-madison all in favor that is, four of us who are present. Council member qadri has stepped off momentarily. Item number two will be discussion discussion and possible action on the 2023 mobility committee meeting dates [1:32:39 PM] . So I have handed out a actually the calendar I handed out is more just about where our council meetings are and where we might have work sessions or city holidays, what we're actually proposing for the August meeting is, is kind of a new idea because we're still trying to sort out exactly which week we're going to be doing our council meeting, whether it's going to be August 20th 4th or August 31st. So what we're going to propose for today is to go ahead and adopt a schedule that lets us post for both days and then you will see a cancellation later on down the line once we land on where that council meeting is going to be. But I didn't want to preempt the work of the council in trying to determine whether that meeting should be on the 24th or 31st. So we've suggested the committee meetings stagger Shaw and pick the one that's not used. So do we have a motion to go ahead and approve adopting both dates and we will cancel one later? I've got a motion Ann by council member Fuentes and a second by council member Kelly. All in favor it is unanimous. We now have council member qadri back [1:33:40 PM] on the dais. So that is a total of five. We will now move on to item number three. The update from the chair of the urban transportation commission, which is now Susan Summers. Thank you for stepping into that role. Can you give us a little bit of an update on the work of the commission? Yeah hey, thank you . Council member Ellis and city council members. I appreciate being here with you today. I think it's been a little while since you heard directly from a utc member. We were without a chair. I was sort of acting chair for a while and now I'm elected chair. So I'm going to quickly, quickly run through the last. Did you let me just ask, did you have updates on like our February meeting? What was the last time you heard from a utc member? I think it's been two meetings or longer. I know it's hard having you all come in the middle of a Thursday given that you're already volunteering on a commission. Ann I think it's been a it's on my calendar now, so as long as I know I can plan [1:34:40 PM] for it. So let me just run you. I've pulled up through February and I'm just going to quickly, quickly run through some of our biggest action items really things we took votes on. So which I think are important. So our, for our, February. Was really the south congress, rotation management. We had a lot of speakers that week and we did so I actually don't know if that's, but then it. We did, let's see. Oh, gosh. Did I close the wrong tab? Did so then in our March meeting, we did a recommendation on supporting the atx walk bike roll plan. So we [1:35:41 PM] did. That was our big, our big action item in March. So we were in support of that plan. Then in April we had we had our officer elections. I am now the utc chair. Rubin, our commissioner, Ruben brooks is the utc vice chair. And we had a our big meeting in April. We had the zilker park draft vision plan, which I believe you're also zo you heard some remarks. We had a lot of, passionate, speakers at that meeting and we also had a implementation date. We did pass a recommendation Ann regarding the draft. Zilker park, which is supportive of the transportation elements of the plan. But the big, the big intervention that we made is there is some discussion of things like a transportation study, particularly regarding the number of lanes and sort of overall knell road format of [1:36:45 PM] Barton springs road through the park. And one of the things that we said is that any traffic study there should really be a study that focused on multi-modal access to the park rather than Ann car level of service and sort of speed through the park. So like focusing on access, we were very I think it's fair to say that the commission was very excited to hear about opportunities to slow down traffic and enhance safety and access to the park. We did have a good discussion also around parking garages. That was not part of our recommendation. But obviously very healthy discussion on sort of balancing the need for equitable access to what is really our crown jewel city park along with, you know, wanting to meet the goals of the Austin strategic mobility plan and give people access and lots of different ways to the park, including via transit. And [1:37:45 PM] walking and biking and rolling. And then that was our April meeting, our may meeting just happened Eid you know, within the last big thing there was a recommendation on, on the light rail implementation options and that is posted to our site. It was, I can also share that with the mobility committee members as well. I'm really proud of the work that the commission did on that. One of one of the most important things we've done since I've been on you. But did I. Guess you could say both or one or the other of or elements of both? The implementation option that goes from north Lamar transit center to pleasant valley and the other surface fully surface running plan which is the plan that goes from 38th or maybe farther, but definitely 38th to oltorf to yellow jacket. [1:38:46 PM] And so in the recommendation, we do discuss Bartz the benefits of surface running rail. We discussed discuss the way that we some some things we would like to see in terms of the interaction of busses and, and the light rail plan. We also discuss some of the things we like best about both plans. So with, you know, north Lamar obviously being the highest projected ridership plan, and but the other plan has some advantages. His avoiding has a lot less right of way issues as builds you know a leg to south congress. So a lot of but definitely very vocally supporting the surface running options. We also did something that was a little innovative. It's like a little bit my but we recommended a project connect ordinance 2.0. Now that we know that we are very heavily considering surface running, light rail versus underground or elevated, which was sort of what was in the 2020 vote was for [1:39:48 PM] under Ken. We suggested that we were very pleased with the project connect ordinance that city council passed last fall, which was to support, you know, workings of various city departments working seamlessly with atp and with capmetro zo to implement the light rail. We suggested it might be good to look at a project connect ordinance 2.0 that would specify basically look at the downtown area, surface running and any additional tweaks that may be needed to made things like egress from parking garages and curb cuts and street directionality and things of that nature that may need to change. And begin to work. Those that will also give people the confidence in the community. We as as metro and all of our partner organizers burns knowing that we're really going to crystallize the priority and for the light Ralls downtown, that we will need to surface running work. It can really work, but when you water it down by not [1:40:48 PM] giving them the full priority or not being really attentive to how they're interacting with everything else going on in the streets, that's when we could have a problem. So thinking about that now, now that we I think many in the community believe we're moving towards looking at a surface running option, thinking about what we can do now as a city to sort of crystallize that in our transportation regulations on those affected streets. So and that's, yeah, that was our oh, and also one of the other things we said is as much as possible, you know, the two for those surface running options, we should really try to integrate the best of both Wright so if it's the 30th 38th to oltorf to yellow jacket trying to get far north on north Lamar and towards those amazing ridership areas that are serving our community up in rundberg, we know that that's super important. So trying to get as far north as we can in phase one or with for example, with the if we go with the north Lamar transit plan, ensuring that we do build at [1:41:49 PM] least a little joint down to south congress so we don't have to disrupt service so downtown when we need to build that in the future. So things like that and also looking at just various opportunities that are going to arise to realize as much of the vision as possible early in phase one and be really flexible. So so let me think if that one is such an important one, I just want to pull it up and make sure I didn't miss any other super important piece. It's on our site. Like I said, and. Yeah to just making sure integrates with all of our multi-modal. Options also that we should be attentive to. So that, so that right of way, so that we should think about options if something, if some part of the right of way is not granted by texdot, we should [1:42:50 PM] have some backup plans ready to go. There and we should also begin to look at, at whether some of our brt areas can be really another element that we added. So you can read through that recommendation. Ann I don't want to go too long. I know you have a busy agenda today, but if you have any questions, I would certainly be happy to answer them. We appreciate the update and your service on the commission. Are there any questions? Councilmember Fuentes? Thank you. Thank you so much for providing this update from the urban transportation commission in my and I think it's helpful to know what the commission recommends as the preferred route out for the first phase of implementation of project connect. My only question would be or suggestion would be to ensure that this recommendation is also forwarded to our atp board members and metro board members. I think that they would also find this information helpful and council . Thank you so much. Thank you. Yes, we did share it with atp [1:43:51 PM] because it was we passed this on the last day of the comment deadline, which was may Swint, but I don't think we forwarded it to the metro board members. So that is a very helpful recommend. Ann thank you for that. We'll we'll try to do that. Yes. Thank you for that reminder, because there will be votes of city council and metro and so it's helpful for us to all have the same bits of data. Absolutely any further questions for the chair? I don't think so. Thank you for joining us. You're welcome. Thank you. Our next item of business is going to be the briefing on the Barton springs road bridge project and the mobility elements of the zilker park vision plan. Ann and we've got about a half hour slated for this. So I want to make sure we can keep moving through this important item and the other ones on our agenda too. Yeah, appreciate that. Thank you. Committee. My name is Eric Bailey. I'm the assistant director of capital delivery services, presenting today on the Barton springs road bridge. [1:44:51 PM] We're going to focus our presentation today on the mobility elements, particularly on the west side of the bridge, but also give an overview of where we're at in the process and what we're looking at through the preliminary engineering report that's currently underway. Next slide, please. I want to start out with a little bit of history about the bridge. It's nearly 100 years old, a 20,000 vehicles per day. It was expanded from its original two lane configuration in 1946. And as I think is as everyone knows, it's a key connection into zilker park, which hosts a wide array of events and large public gatherings. The design portion of the project is funded by the 2020 bond and once we get through with the design process, we're going to be looking for additional funding and where that's going to come from to move forward to make the bridge a reality. Next slide, please. Just some important things going through the preliminary engineering report and sort of the primary goals during construction Ann first and foremost, to maintain the four [1:45:52 PM] lanes of traffic during construction, which as you can imagine, if you're going to repair or replace a bridge can be a major coordination issue and an engineering challenge as you move forward. And the second being maintaining the Morton Barton springs intersection during construction as well to allow for not only vehicular circulation, but also pedestrians and things that are using the bridge on a daily basis. As I mentioned before, 20,000 vehicles per day. On Barton springs road across the bridge at and the list of events goes not only throughout the festival season in the spring and the fall, but also the trail of lights and basically the park is used all year round to a very extensive amount. So next slide, please. So I want to speak for a minute about the coordination that we've had to date between the bridge replacement team and the zilker park vision plan, just at a team level within the project managers of both the vision plan and the bridge project they attend each other's project meetings. They're in the [1:46:53 PM] loop bringing impacts and ideas and updates to each other on a regular basis and that's making sure that the preliminary bridge plans what we put forward in the preliminary engineering report are in synch with the zilker park vision plan. And so that coordination is ongoing. You know, some of the main design considerations on the bridge Paige are to widen the bike lanes and the sidewalks to improve that multimodal connection and allow for, you know, not only vehicular circulation, the structural integrity of the bridge, but also pedestrians and bicycles and everyone that's coming in there and also coordinated on the public input side for the Barton springs bridge, as well as the zilker park vision plan. We had a in- person public, well public meeting in April, Ann, and we've had online comment that's been available knell up until the end of April as well. So right now we're collecting [1:47:54 PM] that public input and, and, and taking that into consideration as we move the preliminary engineering report forward. Next slide, please. So this is an overview of the general alignment of what a new bridge would look like as you can see, some of the key elements show increased pedestrian and bicycle circulation both on the north side and on the south side. As well as maintaining the connections into as Morton and to the west to zilker park. Now now the zilker park plan is not quite as far along and so we want to allow for as much flexibility and openness with the landing on the west side as possible. You see the big blue areas on the left hand side and that is it's going to be nonstructural improvements. So those can be pretty easily added and changed and adapted depending on what comes out of the zilker park plan. So the main focus of the bridge is to [1:48:54 PM] really increase that bicycle and pedestrian circulation while maintaining the four vehicular lanes that currently run across the bridge. And you know, the main reason behind why we're doing this project is the existing structure is really at the end of its useful life. And if you if you get into technical text ratings, there are sort of two general areas. The first being structural deficiency and the second being structural obsolescence. This structural deficiency is just what it sounds like. The bridge is going to fall down. Functional deficiencies are things like the sidewalks are narrow, the curbs are high, the railings are too short, things like that, where it's not a structural problem. The ratings for the Barton springs bridge currently is that it is not structurally deficient, although there are areas of concrete spalling and damage to rebar and things like that underneath the bridge, but it is functionally obsolete. I'm sure you all have been out there. You've seen the very high curbs that are out there, very narrow sidewalks. There's not a [1:49:55 PM] lot of space for more than just the four lanes of vehicular traffic that are out there. So a lot of the improvement that we're studying is related to improving the pedestrian and bicycle circulation in this area . Next slide, please. So I mentioned before building a bridge while keeping it open is a big engineering challenge. This is a selection from the preliminary engineering report that talks about about a way of sequencing the construction so that the bridge remains open begins by by constructing new bridge structures on the north and south side while maintaining the existing structure. And then shifting traffic to allow for the new crossings while you complete the work and connect through there with phase two, as well as phase three, where you construct the southern, replace the southern interior, then the northern interior, and then at the bottom you see the final bridge alignment, obviously much wider than the original with the four vehicular lanes. And then multi use path and bike lanes on on either side. Next slide [1:50:56 PM] please. So now I'll dive into a little bit of some of the project options that we're looking at. Again we are in the pr phase, the public comment side of that. So we have a draft Wright pr that was written by the engineers. It is not a completed document as we are taking in public comment and reviewing those currently. So next slide. So zo generally there are three options. There's the rehabilitation option, the replacement option and the do nothing option. The do nothing option was not was eliminated early on in the process, which left us with rehabilitation and replacement of the rehabilitation options. There are two sub options which include preserving the existing structure and potentially constructing a separate bike and pedestrian structure. Schiera. And the second being a full rehabilitation of the existing structure, widening the deck and the replacement options include different structural alignments beneath the bridge in terms of how that's supported from [1:51:57 PM] underneath. Next slide please. This slide goes into the structural rehabilitation and what would need to take place there. There's issues with the bridge deck as well as the spandrel columns. Spandrel column is a vertical piece from the arch that raises up to support the actual bridge deck. You can see them in the picture on the far right hand side, the little columns poking up out of the arch. So the first step would be removing the existing deck and columns and then building the additional structure on either side. Obviously this doesn't take into account the phasing that's required for this, but most of the existing structure would need to be removed in order to perform a full rehabilitation of on the bridge. And the estimated cost for this option is around $19 million. So there are some challenges there in terms of constructability as well as as cost. Next slide, please. For the replacement options, we consider three replacement [1:52:57 PM] options. The differences here are the style of the bridge span underneath the bridge. You can see there's a single span arch, what they call a two span, sort of the Y picture in the middle. And then a three span, which is on the right, which is where the Y is shifted. Another way. And there's three horizontal pieces of the bridge that go in there. So at the end of the day, the draft pr and again, this is a draft document, it moves forward with the three span replacement option at an estimated cost of $10.2 million based on the construction challenges, the ability to maintain views through the underside of the bridge and allowing for that larger bridge deck on top, which is, at the end of the day, the main goal of the mobility in and out of the park. Next slide, please. This is a rendering of that preliminary option here showing the zilker eagle on the left hand side, as well as [1:53:58 PM] trails. The trail connection underneath the bridge. And then the three span Y alignment for the replacement structure. Next slide, please. And then here is a rendering of the upper section showing the bike lanes, pedestrian walkway, some street furniture for potential median. And what the alignment would look like. Next slide, please. And this is our schedule step right now. We have just received we've just closed the public comment period on the preliminary engineering report. So we're currently compiling all those comments, categorizing them into general categories in terms of what the public sentiment was. And again, we did both an in-person Ann meeting as well as online comments in coordination with the zilker vision plan and as we refine those and get together, the next step is going to be refining those and addressing any comments or concerns and then working on towards a finalized preliminary engineering report [1:54:58 PM] with a recommendation for the bridge. I know that was very brief, but I'll leave it open for questions. I'm sure there are questions. Again, I know about the bridge structure, the zilker park planning process. I'm not the best person to talk about that. So if you have questions about that, we'll get some of my friends up here to help in the obvious. One is are the comments leaning one way or the other as far as which one the public prefers? You know, I haven't I haven't seen those yet. I don't want to give you all a sneak peek with what they say, but we're working on that. And they will be included in the preliminary engineering report and discussion of what the what the public prefers. It's a very diplomatic answer. Do we have questions, Ryan alter, I was wondering if you could speak on on what bill bunch talked about, the engineer they hired. What I'm trying to figure out is, did the engineer that went out there that he's affiliated with see something different than our engineer does and therefore come to a different conclusion or are we getting to a different spot [1:56:01 PM] based on the same same level of information? And so I don't I don't know if that's something that we need to meet with them. Just I would like to understand how we have such differing views from yeah, I mean there's, there's a bit of it that is engineering judgment in terms of the level of damage to the existing structure. As I mentioned, the existing bridge is not structurally deficient and so it's not a case of the bridge is in danger of falling down, which I feel like Mr. Bunch's report was more about. It really agrees with the recommendation that it isn't in danger of falling down. That's not the issue here. It's about providing that access. You know, in and through the park. Mok our engineers are actually here and so they can speak much more in terms of what what went into their investigation. They did much more than a visual investigation. And much I'm only assuming what is a much more in depth investigation because they got up there, you know, underneath the columns into, you know, under in the water and [1:57:03 PM] were able to look up what I can only I don't know what the Mr. Bunch's engineer did, but I can have our engineers come and talk about what they did in terms of evaluating the existing structure. That'd be great. I'd love to be able to just have them sit down with the other engineer and just maybe they'll come to a similar conclusion once there's a similar level of information. Ann but my understanding the, the arches are are not the issue. It's the deck. It's the it's the deck and the columns that support the deck are the main issue. There is some structural work that will be needed with the arches just based on, you know, concrete that has fallen off, you know, the extent of disruption. To do that work is actually quite a bit because you have to get down on a barge in the water to be able to you know, they do what's called fiber wrapping as an option where they basically wrap it in epoxy it together is an option for repair on that. But you know, back to what you're saying. It's. A little bit of a [1:58:04 PM] matter of engineering opinion as it goes forward. And I would recommend if it hasn't already, please submit that engineering report as part of the public comment because then we can easily address it when it comes through in that as well, which is kind of the reason we do the public comment in the first place. So we can have folks that are outside experts that may have different opinions where our experts can then respond to those those comments and things. And if we were to assume or accept that conclusion that let's say you could just redo the deck easily or just kind of put a new layer on there, whatever it is. But that then we're going to keep the bridge or maybe get rid of those very tall sidewalks, you know, make it a true auto bridge and then add the pedestrian and bike. I remember at one point there was a discussion of, well, if you put those there, then whatever needed to support those would inevitably block the historic structure is there is that like a requirement? Is there a way to do it? And I'm sure there's always a way to do it, but how feasible is it to have of [1:59:05 PM] pedestrian bike bridges that run kind of outside of the current bridge that doesn't block the historic nature of the current bridge? It's possible, but then you get into things like what is the best value for the money? Because if we can do a full bridge replacement with the pedestrian and bicycle options on the existing bridge for the estimate right now is about $10 million. But if the alternate is almost double that cost, you know, that's that's something where from an engineering standpoint, you get the same use for a reduced cost and therefore it makes it pretty clear that that's the option. Obviously, there may be other things in play here where we may want to go a different direction. And again, that's, you know, public comment plays into that quite a bit as well. So in terms of the historic nature, I don't know. I'm going to I'm going to call a friend because I'm not 100% sure on the historic nature, but Linda, can you come up for a second? Was the on the historic [2:00:05 PM] nature of the bridge? I my recollection is that it was not a historic with the park. Okay so the structure, the structure itself is not historic. It's a contributing structure to the park. And so there's a little bit of nuance there in terms of what you can do and can't do in terms of the view. And then lastly, just in terms of timing , I know you all are looking to move this project forward. But to your point about it's not in disrepair today, what is the real need in terms of when this how long do we have until we reach that point? It's impossible able to tell. There's no like we there's no 20 years out of this bridge or. Yeah, there's no imminent danger of the bridge falling down. But I can't tell you whether it's going to be ten years, 15 years, 20 years. The fact of the matter is, is a bridge built in this time frame is at the end of its useful life and needs to be [2:01:07 PM] either significantly overhauled to extend that life or completely replaced. And that's just the nature of infrastructure everywhere. You know, bridges like this, you know, have that expected life of about 100 years. And in Eid, as I mentioned, this one is not in structurally a bad, bad state. It's a matter of the functional obsolescence of the bridge. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that. And I will point folks toward there's a road bridge backup item that has been posted as well. If there's anyone at home who wants to kind of see the different options as far as esthetics and historic structure and abutments and some of those other nitty gritty details that are in there that is posted in backup. And I appreciate you all doing work on this. I was lucky to be able to attend the meeting that was at the Macbeth rec center. I know there were lots of good folks wanting to share information. Lots of folks attending to gather information . I recall attending a pre-bid meeting all the way back in 2015. There was a conversation [2:02:08 PM] about historic bridges and the city wanting to look at what are the options with this particular bridge? What is the options with the redbud isle bridge? Paige we know the redbud isle bridge has been addressed and this one still has not been. And so I just want to make sure whatever we're doing, moving forward helps right? Size this for the future. Hopefully also has a nod to the past, trying to make sure that we and austinites can still see the things that we've known and loved for years and been able to, as someone said earlier, paddleboard through them and enjoy it in a certain way that we know people are using that park space very actively. But I will also say, as someone who has bicycle Eid through this park, this bridge is not functional for bicyclists and it's barely functional for pedestrians. I know I'm speaking to the choir here, preaching to the choir. Singh situations where people may be trying to walk or bike in spaces that are not built for them. Where we have busses and high speed traffic coming through. That is [2:03:09 PM] a very deadly equation. And I want to make sure whatever we're doing is responsive to the public, sets us up for the future needs and is going to be safe for people no matter how they are accessing the park, whether it's on foot, whether they're pushing a stroller with a puppy next to it, whether they're on a bike, a bus, if they have to access by car that this bridge in particular is not creating unsafe situations for folks, unnecessary Leslie do we have more questions on this item ? Okay. I've got I'm going to identify hands. I know we're going to need to move to the zilker park plan in a minute, but let's go with council member Kelly and I see director director Mendoza. Did you have a oh, on that point, did you want to talk on that point? Thank you, chair. Chairperson just another consideration. Councilmember alters rehab versus replacement. My experience with with bridge replacement projects is, you know, even if we have another for ten, 20, 30 years of useful life, of the substructure of this bridge as it nears the end [2:04:10 PM] of that life, they routinely need more and more attention and care and sporadic maintenance. You'll see an increased occurrence of spalling joint sill replacements, the surface repairs that consequence of that will be the bridge will be taken in and out of service more often . So if we don't take this opportunity now, you know, it'll there'll be a, you know, impacts to its operational ability going forward. So I just wanted to make the operations and maintenance aspect of this known. I appreciate that. And to that point, you know, the fact that this pre-bid meeting happened in 2015, that means the department has been at least looking at this and trying to figure out the right strategy for ten years already. Yes. So we're not starting at a this is a new conversation we're starting at this is ten years down the road. And those operation costs will just increase over time. Councilmember Kelly, do you have questions? Thank you, chair Ellis. So I'm looking at the slides here and we have bridge [2:05:11 PM] replacement option comparisons. I'm wondering if you could talk more about the timeline Ann and if there's any timeline difference between the different options that are available and possibly see if that timeline contributes to the costs difference between the options or what does can you pull up the slide with a different options on it? It looks like it's slide . Ten next one, no other way. You got that one or the one that's a couple further down from that. Oh, sorry. This one. Okay. That's what I was looking at. Thank you. One more. Perfect in terms of the talking about the time of construction. Rey right now there's not that much of a difference in terms of the time of construction or how long [2:06:11 PM] it would take the real controlling factor on that is the traffic shifts that we would need to do to maintain the bridge being open. That's really the controlling factor. The fact of the matter is, if we were able to close the bridge for a period of time, we could get the whole thing done much quicker. That, I don't think is a real tenable option just in terms of getting people around and things like that. But we could do the construction much faster if we didn't have to do maintain traffic over there. So in terms of the structural designation, there's not really a difference. A significant difference in terms of time of construction. Okay. The differences in cost and things come in actually, the structural complexity that's in there in terms of how long the spans are between Ann, each of the between each of the columns coming out of the water, the arch span would take a is more expensive because of the construction that's required there. And the level of effort that has to take place in the water to do that, to build that. Meanwhile, the other two are less S complicated in terms of [2:07:13 PM] the means of building them. But again, at the same time, the total duration is about the same for all those options. Okay. And I'm not sure if I didn't hear it, but what would that total duration be? Could you please remind me, do we have a duration estimate right now? Ballpark about three years. Okay and do we anticipate because of supply chain or anything else that there might be an additional increase in cost over those three years? I'm sorry, say it again. Would there be any anticipated increase in cost over those three years that we're aware of now? No the cost estimates here take into account rent, escalation and inflation over the period between when we're conducting the estimate and when the project is actually going to construction. Obviously, there are potential for future unseen events that is not included in there. But as far as we have right now, that includes, you know, our estimate of inflation moving forward to the actual construction year. Okay. Thank you so much for your [2:08:14 PM] time and presentation today. Chair. I'll give it back to you. Thank you. If there are no further questions, I will say thank you for that presentation and we'll move on to the zilker park vision plan. Mobility aspects. This. Welcome. Good afternoon. Mayor pro tem council members Greg rey Montes with the parks and recreation department. I'm the project manager for the zilker park vision plan. Joining me is Claire Hampel with design workshop. Design workshop, as you know, was hired by the city of Austin to assist the parks department in the development of the zilker park vision plan. And we're either turn up the mic just a little bit or sure, close enough. Thanks. Yeah is that better? Yeah. Thank you. I'm going to go ahead and hand it [2:09:16 PM] over to Claire because I want us to go through the presentation. I know we're limited on time, so we're available for any questions afterwards. Eid good afternoon, council members. I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you to provide an overview of the zilker park master plan. My name is Claire hempel and as principal of design workshop, I lead the consult team for pard on the zilker plan. I also serve on the planning commission, but I am not representing that body here tonight. Zilker park has been a draw for generations of austinites and those that lived here before. It is the home of ecological treasures gathering spaces, play areas and home to many beloved facilities and events. Was the first community survey took place around the time of the start of the trail of lights in 2020. Questions asking how well zilker park is meeting people's needs and why people don't visit were asked, among others, highlighting the challenges that were to become central to the recommendations presented in the draft. Natural areas and trails are some of the current elements of the park that meet people's needs. But parking issues, crowding issues and access were indicated as problems to solve for other [2:10:16 PM] issues are evident as one walks around the park. Some of which are pictured here, like areas that see intense storm drainage and erosion problems and inexpensive inaccessible areas along the creek. And hopefully you'll be able to visit some of these sites on your walks. This coming week. This shows a handful of the hundreds of comments from the initial survey focused on multimodal accessibility and connectivity to and within the park. The challenge is how to balance these initiatives with the other guiding principles around equity , the environment, sustainability and history and culture. So what is a vision plan? There have been vision plans done for discrete elements and facilities within zilker park, such as the nature and science center. Barton springs pool and the sunken gardens. But this is the first comprehensive plan done for zilker park as a whole. It is important to understand what this vision plan is intended to be. It will outline the long term, decades long vision. Prince apple's goals and strategies for enhancing management and operation of the park. The vision plan does not serve as detailed design or construction [2:11:16 PM] plans, plans for day to day management and maintenance, nor detailed budgeting for park enhancements. This is helpful to keep in mind as we go through the recommendation in the draft plan. The zilker metropolitan vision plan's main objective is to provide a visionary framework to direct the preservation future improvements and care of zilker. The park needs a vision plan to make sure it is viable and accessible for generations to come. It involves identifying the need for recreational amenities, recommending improvements to the park's current facilities and programs, and putting an emphasis on preserving the historic cultural and ecological characteristics sustainability, accessibility, equity, nature and ecology and history and culture are the five guiding principles for the goals, but for the purpose of today's meeting, we'll focus mainly on the accessibility guiding principle as its most closely relates to mobility. The team has been working on the vision plan process since February 2021. Community engagement has been central to the process throughout the two year time frame, which proved especially challenging due to covid era restrictions. During [2:12:18 PM] this time, our team has conducted over 100 pop ups, dozens of small group discussions, technical advisory group meetings, five virtual community meetings and in-person open house, six community surveys and additional work with the parks board working group. Today's briefing is one touch point in the final stages of the project, with a parks board meeting on may 22nd conclude with consideration of adoption by city council later this summer. The plan recommendations for the entire 351 acres are depicted here regarding mobility. Multiple modes of accessibility are addressed, including transit, vehicular bike and pedestrians. Some of the projects of note in the plan, as shown, are realignment of Stratford drive along mopac up to three parking garages, conversion of several vehicular roads to pedestrian and bicycle routes and the land bridge as a connector across Barton springs road. The external shuttle, as shown on this slide, is critical to support the anticipated increase in zilker visitorship as the city's population grows [2:13:18 PM] in the future. The two loops, the two proposed lines will connect the park to transportation hubs and external parking garages like one Texas center, where public square and city hall, a shuttle was piloted last summer with around 500 riders getting free lifts from the garage at one Texas center to zilker. And the shuttle will begin again on memorial day weekend regarding vehicular circulation, the plan recommends holding the number of parking spaces within the park, as there are today, but by concentrating parking and garages, impervious cover is reduced addition. There will be an internal shuttle circulator as seen in the Orange line, an expansion of the zilker eagle train route to the north as seen in the teal color to serve as both a recreational element and a way to get around the park. Other recommendations the plan serve as a comprehensive way to address access and mobility within the park, including highlighting shared parking solutions, capitalizing on parking garage investments adjacent to the park. Like the new Doherty arts center and pedestrian bridges [2:14:19 PM] from the north and east into the park for easier, safer access regarding pedestrian and bike circulation. Ann. The plan enhances and increases trail connectivity, increasing connected trails by 55, with three trailheads, one of them being the violet crown trailhead and five crossing points along Barton springs road, including the land bridge, a six bridge connects the future mopac shared use path over Barton springs road. As you head to or from the lake. Now we'll zoom in for a closer look because it's hard to see when you're zoomed out to the entire property. You'll notice small icons on the design elements to link how the guiding principles and goals are supported. The northern area of the park is mostly untouched with the zilker nature preserve and the nature and science center remaining in place. The landfill on either side of mopac is restored to natural areas to better connect visitors to the water. As mentioned earlier, the rowing dock remains in its current location with pedestrian connections from Edens creek under Stratford drive to connect the nature and science center [2:15:19 PM] and trail users to the water. There is a trailhead for the butler hike and bike trail beside the parking garage located underneath mopac and Stratford drive is realigned to the parallel mopac and leaves its former alignment. Dedicated to bikes and pedestrians. This is a view from the mopac intersection with the zilker botanical garden, looking out towards downtown and lady bird lake with a restored natural area in place of the butler landfill. The central part of the park includes an underground parking garage connected to the land bridge that allows for safe, pedestrian and bike crossing over Barton springs road. The sports area is now more closely located to the polo field lawn and the disc golf area remains in its current configuration. The zilker hillside theater is located at the north end of the land bridge. This is a view from the top of the land bridge looking towards the great lawn and downtown on the east side of the park, Luna road is closed to everyday vehicular traffic. There are new pedestrian and bike connections across the lake and Barton creek to better connect existing and future [2:16:19 PM] parking areas and relieve parking needs inside the park. Boundaries this is a view of the zilker hillside theater connected to the land bridge. The theater's current location doesn't accommodate growth of the theater's programing and presents challenges for accessibility, parking and utilities by relocating it to the proposed area in the great lawn. The theater production can better accommodate all users in this location also provides opportunities for the zilker, botanical gardens and nature and science center south of Barton springs road. The plan includes connections across Barton springs, Barton creek on either side of the pool a welcome plaza and a new and enhanced play area is at the existing playground near the pool and new play areas on the south side of the park. The size of the playgrounds in the south area was reduced to keep the current monkey tree lawn intact. The parking garage , as shown here on azie Morton, would be the lowest priority of parking garages and may possibly not even be needed as other parking solutions like shared use, parking options become available. Pool. This is a view [2:17:20 PM] of the area to the east of Barton springs, pool the spillway. This shows accessible paths to the water's edge, revegetated areas and define areas for water access to allow for healing back of the banks. The west side of the park features new trails in the forested area near the Macbeth recreation center and the girl scout cabin, Columbus drive from the maintenance facility to the violet crown trailhead will be closed to everyday vehicular traffic, allowing for unimpeded access from the greenbelt and violet crown trail to the land bridge to the butler hike and bike trail. This is a view of the children's play space within the sports area. The reason for having multiple players play areas within the park is to better distribute visitors across the park and alleviate crowding. The plan recommendations are divided into smaller projects to allow for more flexibility with implementation as funding becomes available, the recommendations generally fall into the categories that are seen here. Administration accessibility, ecological [2:18:21 PM] restoration and facilities and programs. To understand how the projects may be, prioritize as the planning team did, a cost benefit analysis based on community input received throughout the duration of the project and discussions with city department. It's on this quadrant. The higher benefit and lower cost projects are clustered at the top left and the lower benefit higher cost projects are at the bottom right . The project timeline was established based on the cost benefit analysis. However it is intended to be flexible based on available funding opportunities . Another important aspect is the correlation among projects that are codependent for implementation. For example, surface parking will only be removed when there is an alternative way to access the park, either a parking solution or a more frequent transit or shuttle services. As an example , to conclude our next steps are to visit the parks board at the end of this month, attend the public health committee on meeting on June 14th and the [2:19:24 PM] city council meeting tentatively on July 20th for council's consideration Ann for adoption. So I'm happy to answer any questions you might have. Ends up. And just as a reminder, we're just covering the mobility aspects of it. So I know there's a couple other portions of this plan that folks are curious about, but just want to make sure we're staying on the mobility aspects. Councilmember Fuentes, thank you. I just wanted to circle back on the parking garage. That seems to be garnering a lot of attention in our community. I know I certainly have received lots of emails regarding it. Can you clarify from the comments that you presented to us earlier? You mentioned that we might not need the parking garage if we're able to come up with different strategies and solutions. So can you re-emphasize that portion or elaborate a little bit more? Sure it's tough to do with just ten minutes, but we the planning team started with the assumption of keeping the same number of parking spaces as we were able to calculate that are there [2:20:25 PM] today. And that's just under 2500 spaces. That includes what we termed formal parking, which is paved surfaces with informal parking, which is areas like the butler landfill, knell and the polo field. So using that as the number that we were aiming to achieve, the idea to reduce impervious cover and consolidate where cars are arriving within the park. That's why there are three parking garages located around the park. The comment about if they may not be needed is we also have a lot of other mobility solutions within the park. Talking about shuttles, parking areas outside of the park that people can walk into with the bridges. So if we are able to accommodate those parking spots outside of zilker, that means they don't necessarily have to be located within zilker and with our population is growing in Austin, [2:21:26 PM] we know that the number of parking spaces that is there today wouldn't be sufficient for the number of people that we anticipate visiting even more frequently in zilker moving forward, anything to add, Greg? No, I was I was going to also mention that the solution of the garages and their location was to relieve of the congestion that we were seeing in certain areas of the park. The other thing to think about is that the existing surface lots right now do not have any sort of drainage enhancements for the runoff. So some of the parking lots that are near Barton creek run directly from them through the turf straight to the creek. So a garage was a solution to hopefully focus those drivers coming to the park in a certain location. And that garage would treat that rather than the surface lots not doing anything right now. So all those car pollutants just run off into the [2:22:26 PM] park and those closest to the creek or other areas have created some drainage issues and erosion. Thank you. And that conversation around the gas charges, having their own treatment is interesting. Could you go into a little more detail so I'm certainly not a garage specialist engineer, but I know that garages that are designed Eid can accommodate those type of facilities in them. I mean, we've seen the, I guess, evolution of garages from green roofs. Now some here in in the country and the state have now used green roofs. But we're looking for opportunities like that in this park. So anything that is going to be designed specific to something like that is going to be in the next phase . And we wouldn't necessarily kind of try to decide that right now. I think that's going to be in the next phase, which is going to again be in the design phase. That's going to have its [2:23:26 PM] own community dialog. Again to add to that, I know functional green is something that council has been working with, watershed protection department on and some of the elements of the specifics out of functional green would certainly be a part of any future facility design, especially a parking structure. In addition, the urban design guideline is are being updated and I know the working groups are being specific with the kind of green infrastructure that they are looking to see in urban structures as I'm curious about the conversation around the number of parking spots, it looks like it was very intentional to keep that number. The same. Essentially can you talk a little bit about why that is? Did you have public feedback that was not in agreement about whether parking should be increased or decreased? And that's why you chose to stick with the same number. Can you talk me through that thought process? Yes. So the when we [2:24:28 PM] started with the initial survey , Shea, a lot of the comments were around challenges to accessing zilker, whether that's finding a parking space or just overall crowding. So and we directly asked if parking was an issue and there was a lot of response about yes, parking is an issue at zilker park. That being said Eid one one could hypothesis size that well. We need to provide more parking, but that is not generally a best practice in park design. And we heard that with the count that we based off of our information, off of that, we were actually not accounting for all the spaces that are used. For instance, on the polo field, we didn't count the entirety of the polo field as potential parking. We just counted a portion of it from what we could see on the aerial use. The area that was most heavily impacted. So it's [2:25:28 PM] not an exact science for how we got to that number, but we also heard that we should have only counted the formal paved spots that are the quote unquote legal spots that are there today. But we know that people all today are using the gravel lot, the polo field, as parking spaces as. So that didn't seem like a responsible way to address the need for parking. So that's why we arrived at counting both the formal and informal spaces, but not trying to accommodate more parking than that. Today, even though the population of Austin is growing, Wright and I have seen even over the past couple of years, every so often there will be a busy day in the park and people start jumping the curb and parking on the pecan grove and that's caused a lot of I know I get notes about it, I get emails, I get text messages about people that are concerned about that. So I know there's the right balance of not incentives causing people to be parking in places that are not designated. But at the same time , if the formula doesn't work, [2:26:29 PM] people will just jump the curb and start parking anywhere. And then it gets very hard to maintain with parking tickets or changing that behavior. Once someone has decided they're just going to make their own spot. Wright trying to find that balance. So I really appreciate that. And did I see you had your hand up? I'll let you go ahead and ask some questions because I know I'll have a few more. But I'll be here till the end of the meeting. And you may not necessarily want to be. I appreciate that. And this is right where you left off as it relates to the polo field, you're not counting any of the polo field as parking in the future. It's you're using it as informal parking today, but nothing for the future, is that correct? Correct. At surface level. So the proposal that we have in front of you is an underground parking garage, two stories that would accommodate that. What is currently being parked on top of the do you know what the number of stalls you're planning for the underground garage is roughly that garage. Do you know? I'd have to look at [2:27:33 PM] the plan, but I think it's around 350. I think it's more than that. No, it's several. It's in the hundreds. Okay. Yeah. And so if I'm looking at your and looking at your plan kind of prioritization of, of the garages, it would be the underground mopac and then as Morton, would that be a correct characterization? Ann correct, yes. Okay. And. For for the garages of the 2450, how many come from the garages? And that might be in here. And I just missed it. But. In the garages. Yeah. So about. 2000 accommodated in the garages , the three garages, 2000 spots and then the remainder of the 450 is along Barton springs road as parallel parking. And then we [2:28:34 PM] are keeping some of the surface lots, such as the one that's on the south side of the pool for accessibility reasons as and the existing parking on the north side of the pool. So that would mean Ann on your car, your parking spot count for the garages. I would have to imagine. Then the mopac garage is planned to be quite large. If you're only doing 400 underground and I. I don't want to quote those numbers, but it's 2000 total. So and have you all had any discussions with texdot about Ann and how are we feeling about that? Yeah, we had multiple pool discussions with may and texdot and a representative of texdot was on our technical advisory group meeting, which we met with 5 or 6 times during the process. They we discussed the parking garage idea and if you've seen previous iterations of the plan, at one point we had the garage to the east side of mopac. After those discussions, we felt comfortable [2:29:37 PM] to move it underneath mopac knowing that there is a mopac south expressway project coming online, and that if this plan gets far enough ahead of that process, that there's a greater chance of working through an improvement like that. The bottom line is they didn't take it off the table, got it. Great. And then lastly, and you touched on it a little bit with Barton springs road, we have those parallel parking spots. I know there's been a lot of discussion about having one lane road versus the existing two lane road, and I fully get your job was to look at what makes the park the best, not the full mobility of the region. But that is an item just kind of I know you all have all flagged and heard this, but if we just look how things are, how they're designed, right? If you want to get east west, it's Barton [2:30:38 PM] springs road. If you're south of the river, it's Barton springs road. Or you got to go all the way down to 90. And that's just a reality that we face. And so I think further discussion on that, we've had lots of discussion on that. But I know we're going to be diving deeper into that issue. And so I just want to flag it here today. We've had lots of conversations about that particular bridge and who it serves and who uses it every day and trying to understand better the traffic flow that's dependent upon that. And I know over the years, I think it was probably over ten years ago, there was some talk of expanding lanes along Barton springs road. And I just want to assure people that that's not where the conversation lies today. It is more about maintaining or eventually if it's an opportunity, potentially minimizing lane traffic just so that we can right size some of the turns that happen along that street. There's a lot of like left Wright that happens and if we can figure out a way to get traffic to flow better, I'm [2:31:39 PM] willing to have those conversations us but I know we definitely need more of the bike and pedestrian infrastructure as has been showcased by the new shared use path going in around the botanical garden that was funded with quarter cent funding . That is something that I think lends itself well to this plan and allows for more people to be able to utilize the park. I know just last weekend, the weekend before last, I was going to take a left on Stratford and I see a dad with a stroller with a tiny one in it with a puppy by his side and a mom with a little bit older one, but still a young one trying to make their way up to the zilker botanical garden. And I just think that's a place that we shouldn't we shouldn't be. I think there's a lot of people in agreement with me here that we should at least make sure that people trying to use this space have safe, accessible options, no matter which corner of the park they want to use. I know in 2019 we did a capmetro pilot to double up the 30 route that runs through there. I'm not quite sure where the data landed. I don't know that it necessarily [2:32:40 PM] Leslie was something people jumped on in the moment, but I think if we revisit that conversation and start talking about the summer months and whether I as a new we call me the baby capmetro board member can come in and try to activate more bus bus activity coming into that park. I think that's really helpful for folks. But I want to be mindful that people with Doggett, people with double strollers, people with mobility impairments are not necessarily going to serviced by one specific option. They're going to have to have all options on the table to make sure that they aren't excluded from this space. I see the microphone moving. Did you want to jump? I just wanted you brought up capmetro. I should point out that there were also meeting with us and part of this planning process. So we coordinated with them quite a bit to talk about the existing route and looking at frequency, looking at even discussing like the, you know, the name changing, because I think it's still I'm sorry, Barton creek mall and instead kind of incorporating the park name in there to help people identify [2:33:40 PM] why that it is part of the destination on the way to the mall, obviously. But just something like that. We even talked about the possibility of the zo. If you recall, we've been here long enough. The zo that used to run north and south of the river. So that was something else that we discussed in enhancing transit to the park . So that was definitely something we talked about quite a bit and it was about improving the user experience and the safety within the park from a bike and ped standpoint, much like you just said about your observation recently. That's really great to hear because I know they recently incorporated the bull creek route, so now it's got like a Barton creek to bull creek name, which is great because folks that may have, you know, had to stop downtown and change busses now have access to that park space as well. So and I know capmetro is a great partner in trying to make sure there's as many mobility options for everybody as possible. So I'm certainly looking forward to those conversations progressing . Council member Ryan alter had already brought up the [2:34:41 PM] discussion of Barton springs boulevard. Eid can you talk a little bit about how and when decisions would be made about on street parking for, for that section of the road? And I'm also approaching this from a mindset of public safety, trying to make sure if we have that on street parking and a lane narrows and there's an emergency vehicle trying to get through, have we thought about how and when those conversations take place to ensure we don't have gridlock? Mok in that situation ? Ann so zo with the cross section of Barton springs road, what we kept hearing about in the planning process was the high speeds and people not feeling safe when they're in the park. Traversing that, whether they're on bike, foot, etcetera, crossing it, riding along it so that led to a lot of conversations with rtd. Obviously, the parks department does not get involved in roadway design and our level of service . So we would lean on the Austin transportation public works department to help lead us through that process. So in [2:35:41 PM] those discussions so in the plan, what we have done is add flexibility in saying that the images that we provide in the plan are not final or set in stone, but they're more possibility Denise to kind of get the discussion going and to further that into the design phase, but also understanding that rtd is going to play a huge role in that because they're going to be able to look at that roadway in a more complete way than we ever could. But we were providing was the information that we were hearing in our planning process and sharing that with them so that they could get a more complete picture of what the experience has been thus far in the park. And it's one that is not very safe and it's not inviting your , you know, observation seal at that point. So again, we kept hearing about that a lot. So I just want to make sure that moving forward, rtd is going to be part of those discussions. Burns and we would certainly within the park, be part of those conversations. I appreciate that. I know sometimes it's hard to tell what the vision plan, how much is [2:36:42 PM] fully baked out. There can be this feeling of decisions already being made, but there's a lot of this that is still tbd . There's not funding allotted for it. There's a lot of conversations that will have to take into consideration piece by piece as needed. And the last question that I'll ask is just to make sure that the conversations around the zilker eagle are being included in I know we heard about the bridge repair or replace project and trying to make sure that whatever we're deciding is helpful with the zilker eagle because I know they're still working through some construction Ann decisions that need to be made on that. So they're in the conversation. Wright as far as making sure the bridge and the plan work for the eagle, yes, definitely. And Eid the recommendation about adding some route on the north side of the park was in working with with the zilker eagle and how they envision growing because this is a decades long project that that would occur. But being able to serve in multiple ways, [2:37:44 PM] the 350 acres of the park and building in where those maintenance facilities would be and co-locating those close to other facilities. Okay any further questions? Luz thank you for the presentation. Thanks for coming to the mobility committee and we look forward to future presentations. Thank you so much . The next item we have on our agenda is a briefing on the Austin core transport station plan and I will just flag that. It is 238 and although I try my best to move us along and get us finished on time, we might run out of time for the mobility bond updates. I hope no one's offended and I appreciate the presentation that got put together and it will still be useful until we can bring you back potentially at the next meeting. Garza good afternoon, chair. Vice chair and all the committee members. My name is Opal baruah. I'm the development officer for transportation and public works department for. [2:38:45 PM] First of all, thank you for giving us the opportunity to brief you all on the Austin core transportation plan act plan. As most of you know, we have been working on the act plan for the past couple of years and the primary intent of the act plan is to look into our downtown street and see how we can optimize the streets and revitalize them to prioritize, multi-modal transportation with the transformational projects like project connect and I-35 five central section in the horizon. I think it is very timely to look into different options for our downtown grid, how we can make it more effective, patient optimize them and how can we support the generation and investment on project connect and I-35 project Wright so as part of the act plan, we have done significant engagement with the community. We have solicited feedback on different options that we have [2:39:47 PM] developed Burt and now we are looking into the assessment of, of those different options. So without getting into further details, I'm going to ask Dan Hennessy, my colleague, who is the project lead for the plan? He is going to take take us away from here on. Dan. Thanks, pool next slide, please. What I want to do today is, is provide just a quick overview of what this is and why we're doing it. What it will come out of the process, detail a little bit about the public engagement that we've done so far. And then where we're at in the process and what those next steps are. Next slide, please. So we are trying to figure out what the transportation connections look like right now and what they should look like in the future into out of and through downtown, not just that, but also within downtown and really connecting people across the different subdistricts of downtown. There have been a [2:40:49 PM] great number of planning and engineering studies over the last 20 years. Some of them are somewhat dated at this point with respect to best practices for bicycle design or our current transit plans. Some of them have conflicts with one another that need to be figured out through this process. But essentially what we're doing here is moving past those plans under standing the constrained right of way that we're dealing with downtown and trying to identify feasible projects that accommodate our osmp goals, but also understand the realities of downtown development of the I-35 capital express central plan and the project connect alternatives that are currently under consideration. We want to, as coming out of this process, communicate what those ultimate plans are for the right of way downtown, determine how we're going to implement them. And as part of this process, bring the community along such that there is support and excitement for the changes to the downtown streets for these projects. Next [2:41:50 PM] slide, please. As we mentioned, this has been going on for a few years, but we paused this in 2020 due to partially due to the covid 19 pandemic. But secondly, we got wind that project connect would make it to the ballot and that obviously materially would change what the downtown streets needed to do and who they would serve. We restarted this process in earnest in early 2020 and we've been updating it as new information from texdot and the transit partnership have been available as well as we've gotten new information from our corridor program office on different corridors downtown as a result of the changes to the project connect investment plan , this has become more of a scenario planning exercise where we are working across a number of different options that, you know, this has become less prescriptive and more of us making sure that we're able to provide input to both texdot and the atp, but also that we've got [2:42:52 PM] our ducks in a row to be able to act once they've made decisions about their projects. I will also note that developing this plan was an action item in the approved smp from 2019. Next slide, please. So with respect to the capital express central plan, texdot has shown a new connection of fifth street across the freeway. They've also shown on the west side of the freeway, two way sixth street and seventh street. And they've also shown a reversal of eighth street. The schematic that you see in front of you for the 100ft to the west of the proposed boulevard along I-35 is as far as we've seen with respect to their modeling and their schematic design. So there's no plan from them in terms of how this integrates back into our city streets. So that's a big part of what we're trying to do. We're also trying to get more information from them about the modeling for the specific required butts of these changes. If they're, you know, if it makes it easier on them [2:43:53 PM] and they haven't thought of us, if there's a good reason for them. But we do think that after reviewing these changes, they do facilitate some of our plans and we can make them work with broader changes farther to the west through downtown. I'll also note that this S plan does provide pretty significant capacity into and out of downtown to make up for what will show on the next slide in terms of some of the lost capacity with respect to vehicles getting into and out of downtown. Next slide, please. So I mentioned the capacity constraints. Really, it's a two locations that we would find changes with respect to vehicle capacity getting in and out at the drag. We don't quite make it on this map, but you'll have reduced vehicle capacity at Guadalupe across martin Luther king coming into downtown and then either at either location crossing Cesar Chavez vehicle operations would change fairly significantly depending on the change or the program implemented. So we've we've [2:44:54 PM] considered both and we're planning for both. And frankly, we need an answer from atp before we can deliver a full draft plan. But all the options are being considered as part of this planning exercise. Next slide, please. Our ultimate process. We're really kind of stuck in that cycle of blue right now where we get information Ann from our partners and review the osmp review our modal networks for bikes and for transit in particular, and try to figure out how to implement projects that materially meet our needs there, but also provide consistency and ability for texdot and atp to get the full efficiency out of their projects. And tie back into the downtown grid network again. All of this is done in the constrained idea of the 80ft that the downtown grid gives us from building face to building face. You know, if we implemented everything that's in some of the plans that we have already, we would need 120ft of [2:45:54 PM] space. So the other part of this plan is to really make decisions about what goes where and figure out what that looks like on every individual street downtown so that we can be clear about what streets are supposed to do and what they're not supposed to do, but then also ensure that we're creating enough streets that do enough of everything to create full networks for people . So. Next slide, please. This is comes from the central city in motion plan from the city of Portland. But we really like this deliverable in terms of simple graphics, in terms of the extents of the projects, what they'll be both from a cross- section perspective, but also on the ground and then quick explainers about why we're doing them. The benefits of them and planning level cost estimates that include or that can be included in funding exercises to determine how these actually get implemented and our ability to implement them. Also talking with our partners who are going to require some of the changes to streets and what they might be able to do in terms of helping to facilitate some of [2:46:55 PM] these changes. Next slide, please. Ultimately, that will all get compiled into a full list of projects that are all based on feasible design solutions that have been worked through every division within dpw with capmetro, with atp. Some will include, some coordination with texdot to make sure that we've understood everything that that they have influence over to. But then it will lead to a one year plan, a five year plan, a ten year plan that corresponds to the construction of those projects as well. Next slide, please. We have done extensive public engagement through this with really great results, and I don't want to take too much credit for that because our partnership with the downtown Austin alliance is really move the needle for us on this. They identified helped us identify more than 80 downtown stakeholders. They put together a couple of different working groups that helped us organize different public events, publicize our surveys across the two surveys we had. We had more than 3500 responses, which is as successful a survey as former [2:47:55 PM] rtd had ever had as part of our outreach and engagement on a on a planning effort like this for a for a such a narrow region. And so we have been focusing both on covering downtown, but also making sure that we're engaging people outside of downtown Ann, as well as identifying focus populations for downtown. And you'll see that in a couple of slides that we really thought about what musicians and hotel staff and janitorial staff and state office workers and a number of others to make sure that we talk to all of them, gave them the opportunity to publicize this and make sure that we heard from those different populations. Next slide, please. Just a quick map of some of the events. In our first phase, we were downtown Ann and we got some feedback and through some of our boards and commissions that they thought we were maybe too downtown focused in some of our engagement. So as you'll see on the next slide, when we went to phase two. Next slide, please. We similarly did the same phase events downtown, but we also [2:48:56 PM] tried to make sure we got to every council district to give people the opportunity to meet us in person. In addition to the survey, in addition to downtown events, and that helped expand engagement to new demographics and new communities that we didn't get to the first time around. Next slide, please. So to those engagement results, the first survey really focused on stated preferences for people about what they wanted the streets to do and what we heard loud and clear was that they preferred protected bike lanes, which Eid sidewalks and also active building frontages and street Zones where they would be essentially anything that happened between the two curbs is what people asked us to not prioritize, even to the extent of transit only lanes. We were a little bit surprised to see that those rated slightly lower. But I think people really strongly had a preference for a protected bicycle and micromobility network throughout downtown. Next slide, please. We also asked people how they get [2:49:57 PM] downtown right now and how they'd like to get downtown Ann not just to and from, but also move around within. And essentially everything that's not in a car. People had a preference to want to do more. There are a great number of people who currently drive alone who or or otherwise take a tnc or carpool who would love to do that less and just feel like we haven't given them the options through our infrastructure decisions to provide that opportunity for them. So we have a pretty clear mandate here from the public to give people the opportunity to do those things through our infrastructure decisions. Next slide, please. This slide has way too much information. But what I wanted this to show you through this heat chart is that no matter how we slice the populations in terms of the demographic respondents, gender, race, income, age, some of those focus populations that I mentioned, every group told us the same thing. We definitely expect made more changes in terms of [2:50:57 PM] prioritizing travel within or to or exiting downtown and whether there was preferences for vehicle lanes or bike lanes or sidewalks or whatever. But every every group told us the same thing. It was frankly pretty shocking how standard it was. So across the 2100 responses, most of these categories are, well, each of them is over 100 responses. Most of them are several hundred responses through the survey. Next slide, please. In the second phase, we asked people to essentially we showed them their revealed preferences in terms of what the street sections would look like starting with what we would what would be on the streets if we did nothing at all. So this is from the great streets master plan, the two sections that are in there, the typical great street that is most applicable throughout downtown, has the very nice 18 foot tree furniture Zones and sidewalks in front of the buildings. Essential Leslie the great streets master plan leaves that to two travel lanes and parking with mixed bicycle lanes in between and it might be [2:52:00 PM] some preference from knowing what the other options were and seeing the having done phase one of the survey. But people really did not like that option. And again, the great streets master plan was completed in 2001. We've learned a lot about bicycle design since then. Many of you have been across the pond to see best practices from around the world. We're implementing a lot of that now. You know, even something like third street wasn't thought about at the time of the great streets master plan. So there have been a lot of change. And again, even if we left it as it is now, there's not a great deal of support for those alternatives. I think people understand that that we need to be more flexible in terms of our designs. Next slide, please. We presented people with a couple of different options as none of these we made clear that none of these are directly for implementing, but we showed based on the dimensions and the ability to provide three travel lanes versus one bike lane, [2:53:00 PM] three travel lanes versus two bike lanes with narrower pedestrian spaces, removing a travel lane, but providing full great streets and better bike lanes. There's a strong preference for complete bicycle Ann micromobility networks throughout downtown, making sure that we're providing that in both directions and doing so potentially at the expense of some pedestrian space. You know, not not harkening strictly to the 18ft. That's in the great streets master plan, but also potentially at the ability to provide travel lanes. We wanted to again, to just show people the results of their phase one survey and say confirm again that this is what you told us and we want you to we want to understand if you support these alternatives or not. Next slide, please. We also proposed a couple of different scenarios related to the bicycle network in terms of our ability to expand it and what it might cost people. Those included some maps related to where those bike facilities might be. Again [2:54:01 PM] people asked us to provide the greatest expansion Ann to the bicycle and micromobility network that we thought possible . We tried to make it clear about what that would lead, what that would cost in terms of vehicle lanes, in terms of parking spaces. Luz and again, Ann people told us expand the bike network, provide lanes for scooters and do it throughout downtown. We also confronted people with the question about providing dedicated transit only lanes, so long as we could provide everything else. And we specifically asked the question about targeted installation of dedicated transit lanes, knowing after discussion with our capital metro partners that they really do only need it in a couple of locations to materially change the ability to have consistent operations throughout downtown. And again, more than 85% support for those targeted installations of dedicated transit lanes throughout downtown. Next slide, please. The last question we asked people was about street directionality as I mentioned, the I-35 project is going to require some changes. That gives [2:55:03 PM] us the opportunity to make some changes. And the downtown Austin plan, the gracious master plan, both considered significant changes to essentially every street downtown Ann to make them two way. There are some challenges in implementing two way streets, essentially with two way streets. People expect whatever facility you provide, whether it's a transit lane parking, bicycle lanes to be on both sides of the street with a one way street. You're only doing that in one direction. And with the constrained space we have, that becomes more of a challenge. This is the one place where we didn't get a clear answer from people. There's a slight preference for two way streets throughout downtown Ann, but not significant Swint and not as strong as we've seen with some of the other items in terms of bicycle networks and the transit lanes. Next slide, please. Similarly to the phase one survey, we saw the same across the board here. Gender race, income, downtown groups all told us the same thing again , got the same number of response times throughout the categories and you know that was [2:56:04 PM] really heartening for us to see that we have a broad coalition of people who support these changes. Next slide, please. So where are we at? We essentially know what txdot is proposing to us with related to I-35. We'd love some more information from them about specific modeling questions. We have and how they plan to transition to the west of the proposed boulevard throughout downtown. I mentioned that we have widened this out to be a planning exercise that is scenario based, based on what we hear from Austin transit partnership about the initial investment for project connect. We are in the process of developing what we know in different plans right now so that we can respond to that and have a draft plan ready for review once we get that answer and then through the summer we will be dotting the I's and crossing T's on that draft plan and coming back to boards, commissions, council for review for comment, for further consideration. But we also do need to be able to provide Eid [2:57:05 PM] information to tex-dot into into atp rather for helping them begin detailed design on their projects and help us implement some of these changes, things that they need to happen that provide us an opportunity to create our networks with that, that's it for the presentation and I'm happy to answer any questions. Councilmember qadri yeah, I will make this as quick as possible because I know people are going to ride on bikes in the next three minutes. Is that right? In theory. In theory, yeah. I appreciate hearing about all this stuff related to downtown, but I'm curious about the vision for Rainey street. There's obviously a lot of development. There's a lot of constraint on folks in terms of transit, walkability, you know, the whole nine yards. So I guess my question to you is there is there money that is potentially whether through bonds or elsewhere, you know, is there money to put towards Rainey street in terms of safer infrastructure, like like sidewalks and all that? Yeah so [2:58:06 PM] a lot of that is happening right now through two different development applications. Those you know, those cranes that you see down there building, they all have a series of improvements that they're responsible for building by the time they complete their construction. That is a fairly early, complete set of improvements. We feel in terms of, you know, it really doesn't feel like it right now with six cranes and traffic control devices everywhere. But it will when they're done there will still be some work to do. The S&P and the this plan do consider some additional connections, an extension of Rainey street to Cesar Chavez, additional improvements at red river street and Cesar Chavez for bikes and for better aligning that intersection. So there there are those are considered in the plan. But really we think they are materially implemented through the improvements that are tied to those respective site plans. [2:59:07 PM] You yeah. Thanks Dan, so zo council member yes. Right now in the Rainey district, there are a lot of construction projects underway that are a real challenge for us as well as the residents out there. But as Dan mentioned, when the projects are are going to be completed, there is going to be certain improvements that are going to increase safety as well as mobility. For example, on red river street, when that is done, there is going to be a wider sidewalk on the west side of the red river street, as well as a cycle track on the east side of red river street that is going to connect to the Davis street. And there is going to be another cycle track north side of Davis street that is going to connect red river street to Rainey street. There is also going to be a traffic circle at Davis street and red river street. So there are numerous improvements that are going to happen eventually when all this construction projects are going [3:00:08 PM] to be complete. Eid. Great. Well I appreciate that. Yeah, I know we had an opportunity to be at the listening session and Rainey earlier on and a lot of really passionate folks on Rainey street, so I'm sure they'd be really happy to hear about all this. Thank you. Thanks, councilmember Fuentes. Thank you. Thank you for presenting this information and this data. I was actually uniquely surprised that even construction workers favor a dedicated transit lane. So that was really interesting to learn. It was that slide 15 really caught my attention. There's a whole section on the protected bicycle and micromobility lane and the ones with the darkest green are janitorial and late night musicians and bar restaurant and venue staff. And you can see this real trend that people who are traveling late at night, especially after midnight, are probably the ones in the most need of these protected lanes to the point that miss crow that came to speak to us earlier today was talking specifically about this, you know, working on Rainey or downtown and living on [3:01:09 PM] east Riverside and how do we help connect out those commuters safely in the in the midnight hours? Yeah, my colleague Kelsey vizard and I, we went down to a lot of the venues and spoke to doormen and servers and bartenders and it was overwhelming how tied to vehicles they feel they are right now, given the late hours and the lack of alternatives is again, because we haven't provided them with a choice. That's great to see. That was a really great presentation. Thank you. Thank you. On that note, we are going to be postponing the bonds report that we were set to take up and that leaves us with announcing the update on the strategic mobility outcome. I see assistant city manager is good. He's waving his hand saying review the report. It is now going to probably be renamed as city of Austin mobility report. So if you see that on future agendas, just take note that that's essentially the same document. We're just renaming it and then we will not have a June meeting or a July meeting and we [3:02:11 PM] will now be posted for meetings on the 24th and 31st. But again, we're only going to pick one of those days as the city council calendar gets updated. And so just be aware that one of those will be canceled and we will only pick one of those dates and we'll likely be talking about I-35 project connect and potentially the cypress and shoal project update that council member qadri had asked for previously. Yes, thank you, chair. I would just ask if director snow can reach out to my office. I still would like to meet with him about the bonds update, so just wanted to flag that. Thank you. Sounds great. And on that note, it is. 3:02 P.M. And we are adjourning. I'm sorry. My hand is raised. Go ahead. Council member harper-madison Ann. Thank you. I appreciate it. I actually had a few other items for potential consideration for future agendas. One question I had that I didn't ask during the course of this conversation. This was super informative and very helpful, but I would like very much to have a very explicit conversation. Ann that specifically is directed by way [3:03:13 PM] of district. I want to know what options would make this easier and more acceptable or more accessible rather, for residents of neighborhoods like mine and east and northeast Austin to get access to zilker park. I feel like some things were addressed, but I don't know that we spent enough time and or emphasis to make it so that it's easier for me moving forward as we continue these conversations about itod and I'm doing all this sort of district level planning, it would be really helpful to continue conversations about connecting city. We're talking about boggy, connecting to walnut, connecting to shoal, connecting to like really having a truly connected city. So I'd just like to have a little more information about how this specific zilker conversation Ann gives more people in district one access to a park that I think traditionally we oftentimes just don't access. The other thing that I'd like to put on the agenda for potential consideration as something we can have a discussion about is I know that, you know, during the course of our conversations with our partners at and their bond [3:04:13 PM] funding, one of the things that we've discussed during the course of that conversation is about their electrification of their fleet. I would love to hear from them about what that looks like, what the timeline looks like, and how we as a body can support that effort. I am also very interested in those conversations. So I hope that we can find more time to dig deep in that, whether it's here or whether it's with the full city council. I know that there is a lot of overlapping conversations with aisd right now, given that their bond just passed. And so we want to help make sure we're good community partners, but those are really good items for us to identify. Thanks for bringing them up. Thanks and without further comments, it is 3:04 P.M. And I am adjourning the meeting of the mobility committee. Thanks everyone.