Mobility Committee (MOBC) meeting Transcript – 3/28/2024 Title: ATXN-1 (24hr) Channel: 1 - ATXN-1 Recorded On: 3/28/2024 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 3/28/2024 Transcript Generated by SnapStream ================================== Please note that the following transcript is for reference purposes and does not constitute the official record of actions taken during the meeting. For the official record of actions of the meeting, please refer to the Approved Minutes. [12:59:29 PM] This is a-t-x-n the City of Austin's Government Access Channel we do have a quorum. I will call [1:02:29 PM] we do have a quorum. I will call the meeting to order. I am Paige Ellis, chair of the mobility committee. It is March 28th, 2024. The time is 1:02 P.M. And we are here inside the chambers at city hall. I am joined by vice chair qadri council member harper-madison and joining us remotely is council member Kelly. So. So we will start with our public communication. We have five speakers who signed up. So let's go ahead and call those speakers and hear from them. I know there were a couple folks that tried to sign up late, so our liaison has asked that they send the information to her so that that can be shared with the rest of the committee. So let's go ahead and call our speakers. >> Felicity Maxwell. >> Good afternoon, council members. My name is felicity Maxwell, district five resident [1:03:29 PM] Maxwell, district five resident and Ora board member. I'm here today to share my concerns regarding the shoal creek bike lane and 31st street. As you all know, residents of Austin have long shown strong support for active mobility projects in our city, both through their support of such bonds at the ballot box as well as through their advocacy around plans like our updated bike, sidewalk and urban trails plan, which was just updated last fall. Which is why many of us found it so perplexing to hear that much loved and widely used project along the shoal creek trail was being removed on 31st street. We understand that this is an active mobility trial and as such is subject to refinement and improvement. In district five, we've seen that exact scenario where the Barton springs road vision zero improvements have been adjusted and tweaked over the last nine months. However, it is extremely disappointing to see an active transportation trial, such as the one on 31st street being wholesale removed. That is a downgrade of our active transportation network and should not be an option for these type of bike and vision zero trials. Furthermore we understand that this constraint's street with limited right of way, but there are several compromises offered by city staff that would have [1:04:30 PM] city staff that would have prevented the overall degradation of this project. We would like to request that this decision be reexamined and the bike trail be reinstated. Thank you. >> Daniel Cappleman. >> Good afternoon. Committee members. My name is Daniel Cappleman. I'm here on behalf of the shoal creek conservancy. In response to the proposed transportation and public works project on shoal creek trail connectivity gaps between 24th and 34th, we're really excited about the south and middle gaps. These are incredible projects, and we really are thinking that these are top notch, however, we are disappointed with the lack of a protected facility on west 31st street for trail users. We believe that the city of Austin should be committed to installing additional safety measures rather than removing them, the shoal creek conservancy has worked with stakeholders neighbors in the city of Austin for the past six years to identify a safe shoal creek trail connection on 31st street. The shoal creek trail plan, published in 2018 that had [1:05:30 PM] plan, published in 2018 that had feedback from over 100 community groups, called for a protected trail connection on the south side of 31st street. After years of conversations with the neighbors of 31st street and representatives of saint Andrew's school, it is clear that the pilot project trail was not without challenges. However, the shoal creek conservancy still believes there is a future iteration of the pilot project that could serve the shoal creek trail users needs and comfort. For example, relieving congestion of 31st street with the removal of street parking between the mar and the mid-block shoal creek trailhead could allow for a car and trail users to coexist with the desired lane widths, we support the planned traffic calming measures and we hope to see decreased speeds on 31st street and increased visibility at the shoal creek trailhead, we really appreciate transportation, public works, efforts to identify safe connections, and we can appreciate the challenges in this constrained right of way. It's with us understanding and appreciation that sec, plans to continue to work with stakeholders in the city to find a more permanent, wider and safer trail connection on the [1:06:31 PM] safer trail connection on the south side of 31st street for a high quality all ages and abilities. Shoal creek trail, thank you very much. >> Go ahead. Council member harper-madison. >> Hi Daniel, good to see you, you said decreased speeds. What are they currently? And what are you proposing? >> So, right now that's, I believe it's 25 miles an hour, but because of state law and just the way we do things here, it will not immediately be like it's difficult to lower the speed limit, but we hope that with the traffic calming measures that are proposed in the plan, that they can reduce the speeds, hopefully to something where bikes and cars are going around the same speed between 15 and 20 miles an hour. And we believe that with some high quality traffic calming like, pinch points or speed cushions, that is, that is achievable. Thank you. Thank you . Adam Greenfield. >> Good afternoon, council members, Adam Greenfield with [1:07:31 PM] members, Adam Greenfield with safe streets. Austin I'm also here to echo the concerns over the removal of the shoal creek bike lane between Lamar and 31st, 34th, we really should not be setting the precedent of downgrading active transportation facilities, especially when our networks are so incomplete and so lacking right now, it's especially concerning on such a signature facility as shoal creek boulevard. And just just to point out that this would be the only missing piece of protection for people on bikes, from lady bird lake to highway 183. So this is something that we really need council to, to weigh in on. So we request that that council ensure that the current facility is not removed until pool a long terme protected, walking and bicycle facility is installed, we have over a thousand people have signed our petition echoing [1:08:32 PM] have signed our petition echoing this, this call, staff has done incredible work on other portions of shoal creek boulevard, and we want to make sure that this section is up to those same standards. So thank you very much for hearing these comments. And we look forward to council action on this. Thank you. >> Tamara arenstein. >> Good afternoon, chair and committee members. My name is Tamara arenstein. I reside in district nine where I live in old west Austin with my husband and two and a half year old daughter. I'm also here to discuss the shoal creek shared use path and respectfully ask that the committee consider placing the path and the plan for it on a future meeting agenda. Ultimately, I hope that the city will reverse its plan to remove the shared path. I am a biker runner and walker. I biked in Austin since I moved here and we began biking for transport regularly about two years ago when my daughter was [1:09:33 PM] years ago when my daughter was old enough to begin riding with us. My family has replaced one of our cars with bikes, and we're so thankful for the bike infrastructure in Austin, which we can truly see improving all the time. That said, there are some pain points in navigating and connecting bike trails, bike lanes, and shared streets. As a cyclist and parent, every time I ride my bike, I think carefully about my route and the safest way to get from point a to point B. I'm a risk averse person, and my tolerance for risk has declined even further since having my daughter, my top choice is always to be in a dedicated, protected lane with physical barriers in order to keep my family safe. My daughter goes to preschool on shoal creek boulevard, just a few blocks away from the shared use path. We use the shoal creek trail, the path, and shoal creek boulevard to commute for school, for work, for recreation. We ride to the trail, ride to our religious community in the northwest hills, we refer to shoal creek as our bike highway. And honestly, my family bikes on shoal creek almost every single day, including the shared use path segment. This segment of [1:10:33 PM] path segment. This segment of the path has been a particularly challenging one in the various permutations of the shoal creek trail, but the pilot has significantly improved our experience as both cyclists and pedestrians. The road is very narrow and traffic can be quite high and quite fast as as referenced, especially at school, drop off and pick up times. Having a protected bike and pedestrian lane makes this an easy and safe way to connect the trail. Going north, to the protected bike lane on shoal creek boulevard and heading south to the path along Lamar and all the way to the trail. My understanding is that the support for making the pilot path permanent is quite strong, and I want to voice my sincere hope that the city keeps this shared use path as a safe, enjoyable option for all of Austin's, Austin's, pedestrians and cyclists. Thank you for your time and consideration of this issue. >> Hector martel. >> Hi. Thank you for your time [1:11:39 PM] >> Hi. Thank you for your time today, I'm here speaking on behalf of the Windsor park neighborhood association, we, have put together kind of a vision. It's, expanding urban trails in the neighborhood of Windsor park as you know, Windsor park is bounded on on three sides by highways I-35 to 9183 and connections to our adjacent neighborhoods in district one and district nine are very challenging, there's a lot of new housing that's being built in our neighborhood and along with that, we would like to kind of envision a, expanded bikeways, urban trails through our neighborhood. So we're we're showing a west trail that would go from the Belfast bridge and trail from 51st up to Cameron. And on that side, the Solomon, apartment building is now open. They're now showing houses and, they have actually built the first 200ft of a urban trail, a 12 foot wide concrete path that [1:12:41 PM] 12 foot wide concrete path that goes along that property, that property is also shared by the life Austin and neighbors of life Austin church and with neighbors. We ten years ago, we, connected the neighborhood with those with the church and with the city. And obtain an easement. So we were able to get everybody on board to have an easement. So the only thing missing there on that side is a bridge. And then rethinking of the roads and how those connect in the neighborhood. A bridge would be really would go a great way of connecting the neighborhood, of Windsor park across 51st at that location, through Tannehill branch creek on the other side. We now have a new middle school that a lot of our, neighbors are attending and would like to see an urban trail through the east side of the neighborhood, from north to south, we call it the park to park trail. So palmer park down to Bartholomew park and connecting to the tilly street and, east link trail on the east side, so we would like to get [1:13:41 PM] side, so we would like to get these projects, off of our minds and into the city's kind of, like, plate, kind of help mobility, be safer within the neighborhood and with safer connections to our adjacent neighbors, I've also have printouts. I don't know if I can drop these off. Yes, but I will deliver those printouts and thank you so much for your time. >> Fantastic. Thank you for the input. That is the end of our list of people who had signed up to speak prior to the meeting today, vice chair qadri. Did you want to be recognized? >> Yeah, well, I appreciate everyone who came out today. Got this mic is very loud in my face, I normally don't sit here, but I appreciate everyone who came. I'm going to go a little bit back, you know, as an office, we're committed to making sure all ages and abilities, connect is available, and the bicycle advisory council had a lot of great, a lot of great recommendations. We're looking into, a lot of them as an office and as support, [1:14:41 PM] an office and as support, looking into those measures, and I think we really need to consider, everything we can to work on volume control. And I know Daniel, who I think is still in the audience somewhere, also mentioned the speed control issues. It's currently about 25mph getting it down to the 1520 to make sure that we keep the streets safe. At the same time, I know we need to we need to have a balance to the limited resources that we have. So I do want to say, I do applaud the work of staff, of doing, the work the staff is doing to fill the gaps that we have on on shoal creek trail, while also tending to the needs of our citywide high injury network, so I really want to make sure, that , you know, and maybe it's something we can look at, you know, as a future item, about a lot of the issues that were mentioned today, looking into a lot of the measures that the bicycle advisory council has brought up, you know, maybe depending on, you know, subject to agenda space is something we [1:15:43 PM] to agenda space is something we can look at, you know, next meeting. And I think we're going to do everything we can to explore, keeping the connection that we have, until we can have a real timeline and funding commitment for the off street, trail connection. >> Thank you for those comments. I think there's certainly an interest in taking a look at this and seeing exactly what the needs are of that space, and appreciate all the speakers coming and letting us know they really want to keep that that bike lane there, that will move us to approval of the minutes from the mobility committee meeting on February 22nd, 2024. Do I have a motion made by vice chair qadri seconded. I see, council member Kelly, all in favor say I hi. I I saw your mouth move, Mackenzie. And your hand was up, so I'm going to count you. So that is the four of us in attendance, that is unanimous from the four of us. That moves us on to our update from the urban transportation commission regarding actions from their meeting on March 5th. I believe we have Susan Summers with us today. [1:16:44 PM] with us today. >> We are having some technical difficulties with the webex currently getting her actually logged in. >> I'm sorry, say that again. >> We she's having issues getting logged in through webex currently. >> Okay. Well let's give her a little bit more time and just flag me when she's logged in. We'll go ahead and move on to the next item. And then we'll fill her in as soon as we're able to make that work. Thanks a lot. That will move us to item number three, a vision zero update. Welcome. >> Good afternoon. Council members. My name is Joel Meyer. I am the acting transportation safety officer for the vision zero program. Within the transportation and public works department, also joined by our acting assistant director, Louis Leff, who was formerly in this role, who who can help answer, the committee's questions as well as they come up, we like to start all of our meetings, both kind of public facing and [1:17:47 PM] kind of public facing and internally when we talk about vision zero, really reminding ourselves why we do this work. And so a metric we use a lot is, is years of life lost, which really represents the years of life that people in our community don't get to live because they were killed in traffic crashes. And so in 2023, we had over 2900 years of life lost in our community, and so it's good to just reflect on that for just a moment. So I wanted to spend some time today going over the 2023 statistics and talking about some of the trends that we're seeing both locally and across the country. And how that fits into some of the initiatives we're pursuing with vision zero. So in 2023, we actually saw a decrease in both serious injuries and fatalities compared with 2022. So a 16% decrease in serious injuries, a 22% decrease in fatalities and with the yellow bars there, you can see, we actually had the fewest number of serious injury, [1:18:48 PM] fewest number of serious injury, serious injuries in the last ten years, except for the 2020 pandemic year, which saw some, you know, significant decreases in travel patterns, but so that was, you know, positive signs this last year, obviously way too many still occurring in our community. But we're hopeful that this is a larger trend. And we're already starting to see some decreases again this year. And I'll I'll talk about that here in a moment. Let's see. Yeah. If you could advance that. Thank you. So when we look at, fatal crashes by mode, we did see decrease in these fatal crashes across all modes except for cyclists last year. So 17% decrease in pedestrians compared with the previous year, 50% in motorcyclists and 24% in motor vehicles. People riding bikes did see a pretty significant increase. There is a lot of year [1:19:50 PM] increase. There is a lot of year to year variation within that mode, so, you know, six is pretty concerning. But we're still tracking that as sort of a longer tum trend. And we're hopeful that as the bike network continues to get built out, that number will become more stable and gets closer to zero every year. Next slide please. Same stats, but just looking at serious injuries. We actually saw a decreases across all modes last year. Compared with the previous year, one question we typically get is other modes there at the bottom, those are typically people using pedicabs or things like that that don't neatly fit into some of those other modes. Another trend we're tracking and that we've been tracking for a while, are fatal crashes on city owned streets versus txdot owned facilities. So you can see in the dark gray line there at the bottom. Those are fatalities occurring on locally controlled streets. So [1:20:50 PM] locally controlled streets. So the streets that we have the most ability to impact change quickly, and where a lot of our investments are going through vision zero and other, bond programs. And you can see over the last decade or so, we have really had either a flat or downward trend. And so, you know, even though we're kind of seeing some stagnant numbers overall, if you focus on those areas where we're making improvements, we are seeing a very slight downward trend, and we're hopeful to accelerate that here in the near future, one big change last year that we saw was a 20 fewer people were killed on txdot facilities, going from 83 to 63. So you know, obviously getting to our vision zero goal is going to require a lot of, substantial decreases on those state owned facilities. And highways. And so we were we were really glad to see that, trend and kind of reverse course last year. Another important trend that that we wanted to highlight, and this is based on some new new analysis we've done recently, people experiencing [1:21:51 PM] recently, people experiencing homelessness continue to make up a disproportionate share of our pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities. So last year, bicyclists, made up 50% of those six fatalities, 43% of our pedestrian fatalities. And you can kind of see the trends there, you know, again, a lot of fluctuation year by year. But this is really a focus area of ours that we're really going to need to work across departments and across our region to really bring these numbers down. Another trend that we always like to highlight is just the disproportionate share of these serious injury and fatal crashes that are occurring amongst our, communities of color, and especially the black and hispanic population of Austin. So the numbers we're showing here for example, share that the Austin Austin's black population is around 7% of the population, but makes up 17% of the serious injury and fatal crashes. And if you look at just fatalities, that that number is even, more disparate. So a lot of what we do is try to look at safety, not [1:22:53 PM] do is try to look at safety, not not not just from the safety lens, but also how this is impacting different portions of our community and how we can reprioritize resources to address areas of town that have been historically, under-invest in. And then just quickly looking at the 2024 year to date numbers. Like I said, we are seeing these decreases continue. So as of March 8th, down around 40% from fatalities compared with last year and around 36% with serious injuries. So we have more up to date information on our vision zero viewer, really great resource if you're interested in understanding crash patterns and areas of town that are most impacted, I'm going to quickly go over some of the initiatives that we're really focused on to bring these numbers down. And I think with vision zero, our main focus, the thing that we can most control and that has the biggest impact on reducing these these tragedies is by changing the design of our streets. And so through investments, the [1:23:54 PM] through investments, the community has made from the 2016, 2018 and 2020 mobility bonds for vision zero, we've been really hard at work over the last eight years or so to really change the design of design of our streets on our high end street network and on these high crash locations, and we are really seeing pretty significant reductions in serious injury and fatal crashes at these locations. So 31% decrease in those serious injury, fatal crashes, 30% decrease in crashes overall, and those are benefits that are going to accrue year over year. So it's a one time investment, that that is going to save lives is also reducing costs to our community in terms of property damage and insurance costs to individuals affected by these crashes. So we're really proud to report that, on the 2016 bond front, we are on track to substantially complete the vision zero portion of that of that bond program by the end of this year, so really, following through on our commitment to address the highest of the high [1:24:55 PM] address the highest of the high crash locations throughout our community, and then just some other statistics, we completed seven major intersections in 2023. One complete so far this year at south Lamar boulevard and Westgate, another 11 that we expect to start construction this year. And then 14 more in various stages of scoping or design. So our staff are are certainly very busy right now and have done great work. You know, looking at these top locations. But beyond those top intersections, we're also starting to look more at longer corridors. And these are, you know, vision zero sponsored projects using these bond funds to look at some of our highest crash corridors. So one one recent project that was completed was on bluffs blink bluff springs road. This is a stretch of town that had, over a five year period, 62 people injured or killed. So, I mean, this is really huge numbers for such a short stretch of roadway, in, in sort of one of our underserved communities in [1:25:57 PM] underserved communities in Austin. So we really made this one of our focus areas for the last year to dedicate vision zero funds to improve safety on the street, really partnering with other tpw programs and public works programs. And so we recently completed this this project. You can see we went from two lanes in each direction to a one lane in each direction, with a center turn lane concept. This from other projects we've done in the past, is really one of the most potent tools we have in our toolbox to really decrease speeds, to provide pedestrians with a safe crossing opportunities, and provide pedestrian and people on bikes with a protected facility. So this this was just completed earlier this month. We're going to be collecting data to kind of show the impact of this project. But it's something we're we're really excited about. And we're actually going to be coming in later this year with, with some street lighting. So really making it a complete project. One other part of our kind of street design changes that I wanted to highlight was this [1:26:59 PM] wanted to highlight was this idea of systemic safety. So these are low cost, high impact treatments that we can do at dozens or hundreds of locations across the city. And this is really consistent with what the approach has been in other vision zero cities and across the world to really try to touch as many locations as you can and proactively address those risks, risk factors. So things like pedestrian crossings, street lighting, different traffic signal timing and phasing. These are things we're doing all over the city working with our other programs in dpw to really get that systemic benefit. And in one recent highlight that that I wanted to talk about was some, a really great partnership that vision zero has made with our, signal engineers recently to look at some of our top locations and top risk locations for these left turn conflicts, which you can see in the graphic . So this is a situation where a left turning vehicle sort of has to navigate gaps in traffic, you know, may have a green ball where they have to judge the gaps, but we know from the data that converting those to either [1:28:00 PM] that converting those to either flashing yellow arrows or protected left turns where you get a green arrow really has significant safety benefits. And so working with our signal engineers, we've implemented over 70 of these treatments across the city. And some of the early results we're seeing are a 70% reduction in these these specific kinds of crashes and a 50% reduction in injury, fatal crashes overall. And I think the significant thing here is that these are low cost things we can we can do all over the city, and that we are ramping up, we can't do them everywhere. But in the locations where we can. And it makes sense, we're seeing really , really great results, one other update is on our safe streets and roads for all grant, so this is a federal grant program that came through the bipartisan infrastructure law a few years ago. Austin was awarded a $23 million grant through that program in late 2022, we've been really busy over the last few months, really standing up the contracts and [1:29:02 PM] standing up the contracts and getting the resources in place needed to deliver this over the next five years, so we're well underway with engineering and design for some of our major intersection projects. Pedestrian hybrid beacons, we're going to do a lot of those systemic safety kinds of treatments and a few other components as well, we expect the first projects to start construction later this year, and then going to kick off a citywide lighting plan in conjunction with Austin energy, later this summer, so that's something we're really excited about that we think is going to help us, not just with with vision zero, but as a city, have a more holistic strategy when it comes to street lighting, we were also awarded a 20 2023 ss4 grant for 288,000. And that's going towards a Ada transition plan for crossings and traffic signals. So really making sure all of our infrastructure is accessible to everyone. And then there's another opportunity this spring that that we're likely going to be pursuing. And we'll we'll come back to council for [1:30:02 PM] we'll come back to council for an item on that at a later point. This spring, and really focused on pedestrian crossings. So a lot of federal money right now. And, you know, our charge is to scale up these kinds of treatments through through grants like this last slide, just wanted to highlight a few upcoming initiatives through for vision zero. April is national distracted driving awareness month, and we're going to be doing a big campaign, multimedia campaign to try to get the word out of the dangers of distracted driving and how that can impact people's lives, we'll do a bilingual radio and social media campaign, some, some bus ads on the back of capmetro bus busses and a few in-person events as well. Kind of, targeting some messages, messaging towards younger drivers and kids who can remind their parents to not drive distracted, we've got some big public engagement, efforts this spring and summer, that vision zero is, either a sponsor or co sponsor on, Rutland drive, looking at burnet to Lamar, for [1:31:04 PM] looking at burnet to Lamar, for multi-modal safety improvements will be coming to the community, to talk about that and some intersection projects we have planned there, Cameron dessau, another really high crash corridor that that we're planning to have a discussion with the public about, the trade offs of doing different safety treatments on that corridor. And then, August will mark our 12 month, milestone for the Barton springs road safety pilot. So we'll have a lot of data and updates to share then, we'll also have here in the next few weeks some more updates on the on the six month milestone. So, we'd be happy to happy to talk about that as well. And then, there's a list of the 11 major intersection projects we, we expect to start construction in 2024. Two of those are currently under under construction. And then we're also, as I mentioned, starting to get more involved with street lighting, street lighting projects on some of these high crash corridors where there's either gaps in lighting [1:32:04 PM] there's either gaps in lighting or no lighting at all. So slaughter lane, Howard lane, pierce lane, and then 14 of our major intersections that have a high history of crashes. So excited to share more about that when that when that happens. And with that, happy to take any questions. >> Was a very thorough presentation. Thank you. Do we have questions from the committee members? Let's start with council member harper-madison. >> Thank you, chair, I appreciate it. I'm hoping that you can help me try to explain. If for no other reason, I'd like to be able to be an active supporter and participant. And if it's, you know, a matter of education, if it's a matter of I'm not sure what the disparity is, you said 7% of the population is black, but 17% of these, fatal incidents are black. Can you explain some potential reasons for that? Yeah, it's certainly a, you know, multi-dimensional, complicated, kind of dynamic, but it's something we see happening across the country, [1:33:05 PM] happening across the country, our program actually published a full report that's available on our website about this topic. When we really dug into the data and some of the literature to try to understand why this is occurring, you know, a lot of it has to do with historical land use and transportation policies, where you know, things like redlining and deed restrictions didn't allow people of color to live in some of our central city neighborhoods that are now the most walkable and desirable neighborhoods. And so, you know, lower income communities of color now, you know, typically live on the outskirts of town where there's less access to transit, higher speed roadways, long distances between crossings. So a lot of it has to do with just the exposure to riskier conditions. And that's something we've seen across the country, so I think that has a lot to do with it, but yeah, we're always trying to understand this better. And whenever we prioritize projects, we try to apply that understanding to it, not just where the crashes are occurring, but, you know, where are the emerging hotspots as the land use and demographic changes [1:34:05 PM] use and demographic changes happen in Austin? How can we account for that? So, I really appreciate you speaking to that because as people are moving further and further out, you know, folks that are moving to Harker heights and Taylor and San Marcos, you know, so as people are moving further and further out, but still commuting to city center, I appreciate that y'all are paying attention to those details. >> You know, I'll tell you a story real quick. My mom told me one time that when she was growing up, black people knew they made it when they got a car. So having a car was like, you made it and so now I asked a friend one time I was like, why don't you just take the bus? There's a bus that runs. She's like, I'm not broke. And so that to say there's some stigma attached to the use of public transportation still, that that hasn't been shaken. And I don't know how we do that, but there's certainly something that we need to do to make sure people of color recognize that using public transit is not a status, you know, symbol. It's convenient and cheap and easily [1:35:07 PM] convenient and cheap and easily accessible in most places. So I'd love to. I'm going to read this report, but I'd love to. You know, after I dig into that, really talk about some strategies that we can deploy in partnership, because I think sometimes meeting people where they're at, I'm there with them. And so I can spread the word. You understand what I'm saying? >> Absolutely. Yeah. Thank you for this. >> Thank you. >> Council member Kelly and then vice chair qadri. >> Thank you. And thank you very much, council member harper-madison, for bringing up that disproportionate number of fatalities and injuries among people experiencing, communicable people and communities of color, but then also people experiencing homelessness. So I'm looking forward to digging into that report also, and maybe we could work together on that because I'd like to know more specifically what strategies are being planned for 2024. With that so we can help curtail some of it. My question was about the timeline for the remaining vision zero bonds, or projects funded by the mobility bonds that we passed in 2016, 2018 and [1:36:07 PM] that we passed in 2016, 2018 and 2020. I'm also wondering if any are expected to be in district six, at all this year, in terms of projects specifically in district six, off the top of my head, I wouldn't be able to answer that question. I'd have to get back with you, and then in terms of the bond spending overall, like I said, the 2016 bonds are expected to be, substantially complete, for vision zero by the end of this year. So we're saying, you know, 95% spent, you know, with, with a few kind of close out things we have to do after that. But, through that bond, we've been able to, to address, you know, dozens of locations that that were named in that bond. And, were were expected to close that out this year. 2018 and 2020 are also on track to be spent over the timeline of the bond horizon . We have a lot of projects in the pipeline that are that need to go to construction, and so we're working diligently to get those out the door. But those are also on track. >> And I see that Louis Leff is [1:37:08 PM] >> And I see that Louis Leff is standing behind you. >> I can just add a little context. I committee members assistant acting assistant director Louis Leff, dpw. I just wanted to mention we do have that mobility annual plan that lays out where the anticipated projects are going to happen across most of our mobility bonds, and so you have a chance to look at that for any district specific questions. We've also got a great web page with all of our specific transportation Ann safety projects, and you can see where those are completed, anticipated and where they'll be in construction over time. So hopefully those two resources will point you where you need to go. >> Okay. Thank you so much for that information. And thank you, Louis, for coming up, I just want to say that you and your team welcomed my team to the signs and markings division, and we learned quite a bit about how the sign department takes care of all of our major roadways and signs that are there. And I think they're doing incredible work. And I posted a short video about it on my social media channels. So if individuals who are watching at home want to go take a look, it's really informative and those individuals are out there in all [1:38:09 PM] individuals are out there in all kinds of weather. After serious incidents and, and injury to our signs to get them fixed so that our city is in proper working condition. So thank you so much. That's all the questions I have. >> Vice chair qadri great, well, I want to thank you all for providing the update to the committee. I really am excited about the citywide lighting plan , and, you know, going into vision zero, it's something that that I'm glad we take seriously as a city, I don't know if I've said it before in a mobility meeting, but when I was in undergrad at UT, I was walking in west campus, and a car was speeding and went through a stop sign and ran me over, to drop that semester, but, you know, I'm glad that you know what we're doing, but there's a lot more work to do to make sure that we reduce, traffic. That's to zero, and I'm glad we're getting this update. Only a few weeks since a very high profile crash that happened in the city. In the district, where two people were crossing the street during south by southwest, [1:39:10 PM] during south by southwest, unfortunately, one person lost their life. The other person was critically injured, it's not the first time someone's been, struck, in downtown and killed, and unfortunately, I don't I don't believe it will be the last time, which brings me to my first question, of, you know, I appreciate how much work we've done to address positive, permanent changes and improvements. Could you summarize what we're doing to comprehensively address the downtown grid of high injury network streets? And by that, I mean designing our streets for, for slower speeds. >> Sure. >> Yeah. And first of all, thoughts. Thoughts to the, you know, families and people impacted by that crash is always tragic situation, you know, certainly in downtown just given the amount of pedestrian volumes overall and particularly during special events, it's definitely a focus area of ours and definitely shows up on our high injury network as an area to focus on, we're we're doing several things downtown. One thing we did a few years ago [1:40:11 PM] thing we did a few years ago that that sort of flies under the radar because it's not that apparent to people walking, but is actually looking at all of our traffic signals and, and retiming those to add a pedestrian head start. So giving pedestrians 3 to 5 second head start to establish themselves in the crosswalk before vehicles get to turn and that's a really proven safety countermeasure that that has been shown to reduce pedestrian injuries. And so we did that at 110 locations downtown back in, I believe 2020, and have seen some, some, some pretty good results from that, I think the citywide lighting plan is really going to going to address pedestrian crashes as well, that that was an effort that actually came out of the west campus lighting study, which was, a partnership between transportation and Austin energy. A few years ago, and through that, we were able to implement a lot of great lighting improvements in west campus. The idea of this lighting study is to then apply that across the city and including downtown, and get very specific lighting design guides [1:41:12 PM] specific lighting design guides based on context, including for pedestrian pedestrian lighting, the city of Austin does not have a pedestrian scale lighting program currently, and so this plan will allow us to, for the first time, establish that across the city as a strategy, and then in, in relation to, special events and the tragedy that occurred earlier this month, my understanding is that there is going to be a sort of debrief with the Austin center of events, which is a kind of multi-departmental group that that that will debrief on kind of all things south by southwest and traffic control and what worked and what didn't. And they'll they'll definitely talk about this, for vision zero. We'll be talking about that fatality within our fatality review board where we bring together engineers and planners, to kind of see if there's any other engineering, countermeasures that could have prevented that. >> Great. Thank you, and then one thing that stood out on page four to me was the 500% increase in cyclist deaths. And I guess I [1:42:12 PM] in cyclist deaths. And I guess I have two, two questions related to that. Are there any systematic reasons identified as to why bike deaths increased in 2023 by 500? It was the only motive transportation that's off your, sorry, all modes of transportation outside of bicyclists, off your fatal crashes in 2023, then 2022. So I guess my first question is, are there any systematic reasons? My second question is, are there any staff recommendations for cyclist safety? They're not there may not be that may not be currently being implemented. So more. Bike lanes, bike lane blockage a like a bike lane blockage resolution maybe I don't know. >> Yeah yeah. The increase last year was certainly unfortunate in bicyclist crashes and fatalities. You know three of those crashes were involving people experiencing homelessness. So that's certainly a factor that we're seeing play out for vulnerable users, certainly at night in dark conditions. That's another [1:43:14 PM] dark conditions. That's another systemic factor. And then a lot of these crashes are happening on like level four streets. So our highest speed arterials, you know, places where there's really high speeds and long distances to cross. So you know, I think we've, we've seen in, in areas where our bike programs implemented protected bike lanes and, and bike facilities overall through the all ages and abilities network. We're we're really not seeing a lot of these fatalities happen on, on those roadways. That's really more of the those high speed and a lot of state owned roadways as well, and then my last question and, this has already been touched on, I apologize, but what what has tpw coordination with the homeless strategy office, what does that look like? >> So we've had various touchpoints with the homeless strategy office over the years, lately we've provided them with some data on where these crashes are happening so they can overlay that with their data on, [1:44:15 PM] overlay that with their data on, homeless encampments, the caveat there is that, you know, this is very imperfect information. It's difficult to, for certain, classify someone as being homeless or even the changing nature of these homelessness encampments. So that's, you know, a lot of it's been data sharing, David gray, the homelessness officer, actually used to be on the vision zero team. So we have a really good working relationship with him. And I think it's just given these stats that we've uncovered recently, it's definitely time to reengage with him and understand how we can support each other because they really are intertwined issues. And so, yeah, we plan to do more with them. Great. >> Thank you. >> Council member Vila, thank you and appreciate the presentation. >> With regard to the a couple of quick comments, Cameron road and I'm thinking of the portion between the 54th street and 290 went from that four lane to the two plus 110 plus years ago, and [1:45:17 PM] two plus 110 plus years ago, and there was a substantial decrease in accidents and much easier for pedestrians to cross because the turn lane now is a little bit of a, of a buffer, and a lot less accidents from folks trying to go around a left turning vehicle that would then cause an accident. So, good to see the bluff springs road. I believe, was the name again, similar situation, the data again, that I'm familiar with sure seems to bear out that that four lane alignment does seem to be one of the more kind of difficult and dangerous, both from a vehicular point of view and from a pedestrian, point of view. Pedestrian bicyclist point of view, the improvement that you all are talking about. Cameron, diesel. Those would be farther north on Cameron. Or could you, could you discuss that a little bit? >> Yeah. >> I believe the Cameron dessau project is, is really almost the [1:46:19 PM] project is, is really almost the full length of, of Cameron dessau from, from 51st up north all the way up to palmer. Staff can correct me if I'm wrong on that, but, and I don't I don't believe there's been a final concept landed on that. We're we're going to be going back out to the public this spring and summer to talk about the trade offs between those kinds of lane conversion projects versus, you know, what we could do behind the curb with a shared use path, for example, so we really want to have that conversation first before we present a concept. >> Got it, I also wanted to give you all credit for the, the 51st street, that little short stretch of 51st street between, I-35 and airport boulevard. There was a treatment done and some pedestrian islands put in and bike lanes put in, and my sense of it, is that it's a much better, safer road that, again, similar to the kind of Cameron switch there was this kind of like, oh, it's going to be a nightmare. It was. It really was. I could not tell you the [1:47:20 PM] was. I could not tell you the difference, really, in terms of vehicular traffic. And if there's a delay it's in the seconds category. It's not in the, you know, minutes category similar to the 51st street. I think after the kind of initial shock, from the, the reconfiguration, it flows just about as the same as it, as it did before. Similar to that, how is and I saw the update on, for the future, but how is the Barton springs road conversion another, two, and two another four lane configuration. That's that's changed. How is that coming along. >> Yeah. >> So with with the Barton springs road safety pilot, in late February kind of marked the six month milestone for that. That pilot, after that period, we we've been collecting a lot of data on speeds and volumes and how travel patterns have changes. Also also had a public survey where we collected 1600 responses. So currently we're still kind of sorting through all those comments and trying to synthesize those into a report, [1:48:20 PM] synthesize those into a report, it's going through our kind of internal review channels right now, and we expect that to be ready in the next few weeks. And I think someone from our staff would be glad to come present to the mobility committee. If you desire. >> Great. Look forward to it. Anecdotally I'm not seeing major traffic pattern changes on the road. You know, you're not seeing like huge build ups or anything like that. And again, that's such a heavily trafficked street, especially with regard to pedestrians and bicyclists, that I think their safety has to be paramount on that street. So again, just appreciate the work you all are doing, this is probably if there's one area more than any other area where bang for the buck, it's these street treatments you know, stoplights, those kinds of things like that. They're they're relatively small investments, six figure investments. A lot of times that, you know, you see crashes go down. You see, you know, injuries and deaths go down, you know, again, I appreciate the work. And it just seems very [1:49:20 PM] work. And it just seems very well founded, and very effective. Great. >> Appreciate it. >> I very much appreciate that, one of my questions was going to be about the Barton springs road pilot, what exactly at the 12 month mark, are you doing another round of feedback and collecting information from the people who are traveling through that area or what? What is the expectation at 12 months for reassessment? >> Yeah, I think at this point we're we're hoping to see what this initial data results look like and we'll be able to come back out, either present that we'll be sharing that report publicly. We'll have all the survey results available so people can see what other people are saying about it, because I think everyone's experienced it a little differently depending on the time of day, their mode of travel, everything else, generally the results have been positive from early indications. And so I think what we want to do is continue to monitor that through the rest of the spring and summer, because there are different types of traffic patterns that happen, especially getting over to Barton springs. [1:50:20 PM] getting over to Barton springs. Zilker park throughout the spring and summer time frame. So we want to be able to see that full cycle, full year worth of data and be able to analyze from there. We've got, you know, dynamic speed display devices on those roads so we can see what those speeds are on a, you know, minute by minute basis. We've collected data on volumes multiple times. And we'll probably go out and do that again. So I think we just want to be sure that we've got the full sense of what's happening on that roadway from a volume perspective, if there's any displacement of the of the vehicle volumes that are happening on other roadways, seeing what those speeds are seeing, a full year of crash history, I think will be real important. We've seen a reduction in that report, the six month report will point to what we've seen so far, but we want to see if that trend continues over time. As as council member Taylor said, sometimes the initial reaction is a little bit different, and then people get used to it, and we want to see what that kind of transition into a normal traffic pattern looks like. However, normal traffic patterns are these days, so we want to see that full picture. Then we'll make a determination of coming back around that 1112 month mark and have that conversation at that point. [1:51:22 PM] that point. >> Certainly appreciate that. I've been through that area on a couple different travel modes and can say that it is functioning much more smoothly than it used to, we remember this was launched because of a terrible accident where someone, you know, someone was speeding, hit another car. That car ended up near a food truck with a bunch of people standing outside. So it's very much needed, and I can say my own husband says, I don't think this is going to work. And then now he is a believer and sees that it is working. So if you can do that, I think there's a lot of people out there, that are seeing that more lanes isn't always the answer. Sometimes it's about engineering and creating a really safe pathway in a in a very populated area for, for all the different modes that are being used there, I did have a question about some of the charts and graphs at the beginning about fatalities and serious injury numbers. Is there any where where these are calculated based on per capita numbers? I know that Austin's population has grown considerably over the past ten years, and trying to understand, as more people move to the area and use these spaces is, how how [1:52:23 PM] and use these spaces is, how how do we balance that in some sort of consistent way? So we know are we getting better per capita, even if the numbers individually go up and down? >> Yeah, absolutely. >> And you know, it is sort of a tricky thing to discuss because with vision zero our goal always is that absolute number of zero. So we're always focused on that. But having said that we do report on, you know, these indicators like like per capita fatality and serious injury rates. And so that's included on our vision zero viewer website. We actually have fatalities serious injuries per 100,000 people and so fluctuate burns year to year. But but last year did go significantly down with those crash reductions and the population growth we're seeing. So yeah it's important to track as well okay. >> Sounds good. And I appreciate the information about the citywide lighting, as someone who represents an area where not everybody is on Austin energy, I have been surprised to find that Austin energy still has light poles in places where they are not the provider of electricity to the household, so there's an [1:53:24 PM] to the household, so there's an extra layer of complexity in trying to assess these situations. But I figured if someone was on pedernales electric, then pedernales electric must be doing the street lights and that's not the case. So I have found that to be pretty fascinating and look forward to more information coming out on that. I have a question about speed mitigation projects, how are those going? You know, we have a bunch of streets, mostly on the outside neighborhoods of town, that the ones that are further out from the city center that have a whole lot of cut through traffic, people going 50 plus miles an hour on neighborhood streets, what kind of projects are happening with speed mitigation now? And do you see any new things coming down the pipeline soon? >> Yeah. So a few years ago, vision zero helped lead a kind of a revamping of our former local area traffic management program, which was primarily speed humps and things like that. That was a request based program, and so a lot of what we brought to the table was sort of a more data driven analysis that [1:54:24 PM] a more data driven analysis that looked citywide for things like crash histories, vulnerable users being injured or killed, and, actual operating speeds of vehicles. So going out and collecting data at hundreds of locations, and then also some like community context factors, like is there a school nearby and things like that. So that process really helped stand up a new speed management program, which has been in existence the last 3 or 4 years, they have been busy kind of doing that citywide prioritization ranking where they're picking, I believe, something like ten, 10 or 12 projects per year based on that, on that scoring, there's also an equity component kind of talking about some of those disparities we're seeing, they they do typically still involve a lot of speed humps in those vertical devices, but also expanding our toolbox to look at you know, what what role can like pedestrian crossings and refuge islands play in managing speeds. So we're always trying to like think of new creative ideas to manage speeds because it is, you know, one of the number one concerns we get, [1:55:25 PM] number one concerns we get, especially at the neighborhood level, but I think the big thing to note there is that going from that request based system to a more data driven process has allowed us to really address those streets that really do need it from a safety perspective, and also that equity lens as well. So, you know, we'd probably need another briefing from, from, from that individual to go into all the great work they're doing. >> Sounds good. Thank you. And I will end on applauding transportation and public works ability to pull down federal grant money. >> I'm sorry. Go ahead. One more question. >> Okay, I'll. I'll finish my statement, and then I'll. I'll let you have one more. And then we need to move to another topic, just appreciate how many notices that we've gotten recently about dpw being able to leverage the ability to, to partner with federal grants. And so it really makes these projects go a long way. And someone must be doing a great job on your grant writing team, because I feel like, we're getting a lot of partnership out of this. And I think it shows that staff is doing really great work to get these deployed. [1:56:26 PM] work to get these deployed. >> Go ahead and one more. >> And again, I appreciate the work, great to see the sidewalks roll down and the bike lanes rolled out when they are rolled out. But what bottlenecks? What are the funding requirements? Again, everybody wants to see them faster. You know, everybody want to see sidewalks yesterday, what can we do to expedite, the, these kinds of capital improvements? Just, you know, city wide? >> Yeah. It's a it's a really good question. Something we, we think think about a lot, you know, a lot of these major intersection projects do take time to, to develop. I think that one strategy we're taking is that, you know, as we as we have addressed the highest of the high crash location over the last decade, really we're starting to, you know, pivot more towards that systemic approach where we can do low cost treatments across across the city, and those really can go a lot quicker. And so kind of strategically that that's one area where we're headed towards and have been heading towards for a few years now, I think [1:57:26 PM] for a few years now, I think just the overall, we just kind of need to continue to make progress on that long time vision and continue to fund these capital projects over time. I think our challenge is how do we scale up these projects where we're seeing crash reductions and injury reductions to all 280mi S of Austin and so that that, that takes time. It takes a lot of consistent investment. You know, we're going after these federal grants. There's unprecedented levels of grants at the federal level, state level as well. And then, you know, excited to see what what continues to happen at the local level as well as well. >> That's great. I think that does it for this topic. Thank you so much for the work you all are doing. >> Thank you. >> Do we have miss Summers on the line? Was she able to join? >> Yes. She's here okay. >> Fantastic. Let's go ahead and scoot back. One item. Item two update from the urban transportation commission. >> Hello. How are you? >> Welcome, do I have slides, I think I can share them myself, so I'll try that. Let me see. Here. Oh okay. Oh, it's asking [1:58:29 PM] Here. Oh okay. Oh, it's asking me to change a setting. Here. Give me one second. >> Do we have the slides? In case she can't share them? Let's try. We'll share them on our end and see. >> Yeah, that works for me. Equally as well. Great. Okay, so , we had a very busy utc. For our March 5th meeting, so I'm gonna, we had, five items that were passed, two right of way vacations, which will go over a bit, we had and then we had three recommendations. We had, 20 fiscal year, 24, 25, budget recommendations. And then we [1:59:29 PM] recommendations. And then we had, climate equity investment recommendations and a recommendation about a vote apportionment. And campo next slide, so this is briefly going over the two right of way vacations. The first one is very straightforward. It was a right of way, 64.5 Rainey street that's supporting the build out of the, Mexican American cultural center, map, master vision plan. It's going to be sort of a public plaza. So that's very great. This other one, which is a right of way vacation middle fiskville actually was a sort of a more intriguing one for us, and I thought it would be worthwhile to share with the mobility committee. If you view the image on the left, there's, you're looking at a new shared use path facing south on, airport boulevard and, in front of you directly. The shared use path will continue. You can see it's now sort of just a grassy slash concrete slash, an unimproved median. Sort of space. And on the right there's a street that [2:00:32 PM] the right there's a street that little street is what's going to be vacated to support the development of a, a new, complex there, so that we actually approved this with a contingency that the vacated row remain available to pedestrians and bicyclists until the shared use pass on airport are completed, because right now there's not. You can see how if you're going down this path to the south, you wouldn't really want to continue straight through a bumpy median, but you it would be very nice to go down the path that's about to be vacated for development. And that develop is not imminent. So the, the it seemed acceptable to the, developers and property owners to go ahead and allow that to be available to the public and we are anticipating that that shared use pass will be completed, as we continue to build out on airport boulevard. So just wanted to share that. We think that's important for the, for the everybody who's walking, biking and rolling in that area, next slide. Okay. So that brings [2:01:33 PM] next slide. Okay. So that brings us to our budget recommendations, so this is, we had a group of our commissioners that got together and wrote this, and it was really, really helpful. Big thanks to them. I'll run through the high points here. So, our budget recommendations for active transportation increase the capacity of living streets program to build out an additional 72 activations during the upcoming fiscal year, work with capital delivery services to accelerate projects funded by 2016, 20 1822, 2020 mobility bonds, utilizing the remaining budgets 39,839 million. Excuse me $840,000 for bikeways 80,174,000 designated for urban trails. And establishing an aggressive timeline to ensure the execution of these projects. Working with apt to create a volunteer bike enforcement. And this is, I had some emails about that this morning. Anyway, we think that this is, an intriguing, utc has been sort of [2:02:33 PM] intriguing, utc has been sort of beating this drum for a while. We believe that there are ways for this to work, within within state law, and to set aside funding for associated training and implementation and to purchase an electric bicycle fleet for transportation mobility officers, per item, 4.71 B of the 2023 bicycle plan, allocate 14 million in funding to complete the following bicycle infrastructure at full build quality five miles of concrete protected bike lanes, five protected intersections, ten floating bus stops and then work with APD to purchase 65 meridian archer movable street barricades to enhance pedestrian safety. This is referencing a downtown commission recommendation. Ann I believe that these are, a type of street treatment that we're currently renting, so this would be something that the city would then own, next slide, so these are the data and administration recommendations, enhance the city's data on the number of people using bicycle infrastructure and how that relates to the type of bike infrastructure developed. Ensure [2:03:36 PM] infrastructure developed. Ensure that all transportation and public works employees required to work in person are working at city offices where commuting via active transportation is reasonably accessible and safe, and also ensuring that those the telework practices for transportation and public works align with city council resolution and national best practice. Work with parks and rec department to implement a traffic impact analysis and transportation demand management study for zilker park. Provide funding to start a program for measuring the use of active transportation for purposes other than reaching a place of employment, rather than Orion. On the census American community survey, which does not collect data about active transportation usage for those working at home and so underestimates active transportation usage. Incorporate funding estimates and final budget figures for projects that are included in collaboration with or at the request of partnering transportation organizations such as cap metro, Austin transit partnership, txdot, including projected costs and final budget amounts. Within [2:04:37 PM] final budget amounts. Within these collaborative projects to provide clarity and transparency with the overall budget, next slide. And then we had actually a budget recommendation for capital delivery services. I think there's been I think you'll probably, you know, there's been some concern around some of the communication regarding the, capital delivery services projects and in terms of who is carrying out ongoing community engagement responsibilities, and I think we may take up items on this in the future. And the utc, but in terms of, who is doing public outreach about the ongoing construction that they are doing and planning that they are doing, and you can see these responsibilities could include outreach methods for diverse community preferences as a regular public meetings, consistent and timely updates on project project progress, including any modifications to plan work and changes to the project delivery schedule. Publishing information on the project website such as the corridor program website publishing community feedback [2:05:37 PM] publishing community feedback received during the project design and development phases. Making design schematics accessible to all. Appoint project liaisons for major transportation related projects and actively engage with relevant stakeholder groups. So that is the end, I believe, of our budget. Rex. Next slide. Pretty, pretty hefty. There we have another hefty one with our climate equity investments. I know that council, was looking at what kind of investments can we make that would do climate equity. And of course on utc, as you can imagine, we're really interested in how the transportation related aspects of climate equity. So these are some of the projects that we thought would be worthwhile investments for quad, climate equity. So, and this is, so it's a recommendation of 211,386,000 in short tum ability, goals that are goals that are found in the atx walk, bike and roll plan. So, you can see we've referenced the goals and the plans here. So, 148 miles of all, all ages [2:06:40 PM] So, 148 miles of all, all ages and abilities, bike lanes by 2026. So we've referenced the existing funding and the pro mile cost and analyze that. There's 48,960,000, for metro bike. The goal was 300 stations by 2025. There is existing funding through grants and so additional funding would be 22,600,000. Urban trails would be 94 miles of tier one trails by 2043. That's a pretty long time frame. We've been talking about that a bit on our commission, we've showed the existing funding from the mobility bonds per mile cost and then analyze that there's another, 75,826,000 needed sidewalks. Again, we were just talking about sidewalks. In your last item, a bit, 340 miles of sidewalks, 200 miles of shared streets in ten years. We do have existing funding that's unspent, the pro mile cost. And we've analyzed another 64 million is [2:07:43 PM] analyzed another 64 million is needed. Next slide. Slide, please. And so this is talking about how these meet the, asmp and climate equity goals. So, you know, by 20, 30, 50% of trips in Austin should be made using public transit, biking, walking, carpooling, or avoided altogether by working from home. And so there are some strategies suggested for that in the smp. Prioritizing bicycle networks, including sidewalks, urban trails and crossings. These are all those things are part of that. Our pedestrian network policy would be to complete the pedestrian network, make the sidewalk a system accessible and comfortable for all, obviously completing the all ages and ability bicycle priority network , providing high quality urban trails, and, opportunities to connect and expand the urban trail system and, and also using shared mobility solutions. Next slide. So, we recommend that these, these proposals that [2:08:43 PM] these, these proposals that we've you just saw on that grid there on the first slide for this, item, these are we are really considering these a bridge investment to ensure adequate funding for our short tum goals, we know that we have 2016, 2018, and 2020 mobility bonds. I know this body has heard about how our spending and progress is going with those bonds, but it's definitely the case, particularly with sidewalks, but with our active transportation overall, all that that is the area where we have been more successful in spending our money and building these treatments out. It's also something that I believe, especially sidewalks is extremely popular with our community. People see the need. People understand the need. As we were just discussing people are constantly calling, asking when these are going to be built , wanting these sidewalks in, amenities within their communities and neighborhoods. So it's very important. And we do need, you know, we're, needing additional investment to meet the goals beyond 2028. We do anticipate that, those bonds should be spent by 2029. So we do need, these are, things that support, you know, it's all interconnected, right? They [2:09:45 PM] interconnected, right? They really support climate equity. And they also really support, transportation mobility needs. And our transportation goals for the city. So, you know, we definitely want to keep developing future funding, but this is what we saw that would be a good short time investment to make sure that we're not falling behind, schedule, you know, I think we would be in danger of falling behind schedule on some of our planning goals, as you saw on that slide previously, if we do not have this funding to continue our efforts. Okay next slide, and we also have some additional recommendations to prioritize equity and carbon emissions. So all ages and abilities, bike network project should be selected using the project prioritization prioritization model in the 2023 bicycle plan. It does score projects based on equity destinations, travel demand, connectivity, safety and cost, the metro bike investment should prioritize new stations and low income areas with high mobility needs and connections to cap metro's existing high frequency bus and metro rail [2:10:46 PM] frequency bus and metro rail network, the sidewalks and shared streets investments and the should be in the highest equity analysis Zones. Those should be prioritized for funding, per our sidewalk crossings and shared street plan. The city manager should also consider investments to ensure urban trails planning. Urban trails plan is delivering projects on accelerated timeline. Remember we saw that timeline goal is 2043 significantly longer than a lot of our other active transportation planning and that we're doing. So it does it. Our ability to accelerate that is going to be dependent on increasing internal city of Austin capacity across supporting departments concerning staffing systems and processes. So this is something we see this as a big need on utc. We can talk about this a lot. We may hear more about this in the future, about the urban trails, and next slide. So this is our last recommendation and I've been running really fast. I am a little time limited, and I should mention, and so I'm probably as soon as I finish my slides, I may have to hop off. [2:11:46 PM] slides, I may have to hop off. And my vice chair, Reuven, may have to be the one to take questions, I maybe can spare a few more minutes, had some tech issues today, and, my, my calendar got a little, changed around, but this is a really important recommendation that we had regarding the capital area metropolitan planning recommendation. The utc is recommending that Austin city council members who are serving on the campo transportation policy board request the creation of a select committee on representation, and that committee would consider the current voting structure of the campo transportation policy board and its impact on regional growth. Inequities and resource allocation, and the organization's responsiveness to the needs of historically underrepresented and underserved communities served by the organization. Also, to consider the effectiveness of the campo transportation policy board executive committee includes whether the campo transportation policy board, executive committee is in compliance with the Texas open meetings act. Also to consider the process by which the transportation policy board members elect the [2:12:47 PM] board members elect the executive committee and the officers, to consider whether certain decisions should be made by a full vote of the transportation policy board, rather than by executive committee or administrative review, and also changes to the voting structure of the campo transportation policy board and its committees to ensure that all communities are represented fairly. Next slide. We also recommended that Austin Ken city council members serving on the campus campo transportation policy board offer amendments to the transportation policy board bylaws to apportion votes on the basis of population, notwithstanding statutory voting members, so that, you know, basically so that our citizens in Austin are adequately represented on campo if the aforementioned amendments fail to receive a formative vote by the transportation policy board, the city council should begin working with txdot and the counties of Travis, Williamson and hays to renegotiate or to terminate the campo transportation policy board joint powers agreement. We also [2:13:49 PM] joint powers agreement. We also are recommending the city council direct the city attorney to produce a memo regarding the city of Austin's legal options for renegotiating, terminating or withdrawing from campo. The campo transportation policy board, or the transportation policy board. Executive committee. The memo should include an analysis of possible charter amendments and an evaluation of efforts to renegotiate or terminate the metropolitan planning organization in other cities, and we also recommend that city council direct the 2024 charter review commission to evaluate possible charter amendments regarding the city of Austin's participation in a council of government or metropolitan planning organization, and include a recommendation on the topic in their final report to council. All right. And I think is that my last slide? It is. So that's that went hard, the campo one we've just been noticing, the way that some of the business is conducted at campo, and the way that votes are [2:14:51 PM] and the way that votes are apportioned at campo is not favorable to Austin, which is the largest municipality in our region. So, and, obviously, I think this has been something that is also been a news item across our state as well. And other other, other cities are also taking note. So we're, wanting that to be looked at. >> All right. Thank you. Thanks for that presentation and thanks for sticking around. I know we like to bring you up early just to make sure you can get on your way. We appreciate that this is a volunteer capacity. And, and now we're asking you to volunteer doubly to come to our committee and give us these updates. We really appreciate you. >> It's totally fine. I had some tech issues, and it was totally understandable. You all wanted to get move ahead with your agenda. So thank you for bearing with me today. >> That is all right. And that last discussion was was so good that we are also running a little bit behind. So we'll see if there's any questions from committee members. It does not appear that there are chito Vila. Go ahead. >> And I'm not sure if who would be the right person to address it, but I'm what is the status [2:15:52 PM] it, but I'm what is the status of the mpo vote that took place in the city of Houston with regard to their, continuing participation in the mpo? I don't know, I know that's a yeah, so my understanding is that they had a they had a citywide vote referendum to, ask for equal, equitable representation on their metropolitan transportation board. >> And then the, the referendum said that if this was not achieved, then the city of Houston should withdraw. There was a vote taken at their metropolitan planning organization to, consider equitable representation for the city of Houston. And that failed . And so my understanding is that Houston or Harris county is going to be in the process. I think really, Harris county is going to be in the process of withdrawing. And so that will enter a series of legal negotiations of, whether that's a reforming a new metropolitan transportation board. You know, I'm not a hashtag, not a lawyer. [2:16:53 PM] I'm not a hashtag, not a lawyer. So those those items, I don't know, but that's my understanding of where things left, is that there was a vote taken to, rework the voting representation that has now failed. That has failed. >> Okay. >> I'm. I'm fascinated by that whole, political discussion and, we're in a similar situation, I think, here in Austin where we're, we don't have our proportional representation of votes on campo, so I just want to keep a close eye on that, on developments in our, our city to the east. There >> Absolutely. I agree, well taken. >> Thank you for the update. If there's no further questions, we'll go ahead and move on to the next item. >> Thank you. >> All right. Item number four, bike lane parking briefing. Thanks for being here to give us a presentation. I'll I'll flag for some folks item number 40 on our April 4th agenda, I am bringing one a variety of some of the recommendations that utc [2:17:54 PM] of the recommendations that utc has put forward about parking and bike lanes, and so we're very eager to have this conversation today. >> Awesome. Thank you all very much. And good afternoon, council members. My name is Joseph qadri. I am the parking enterprise manager, for transportation and public works, and yeah, we'd like to give you an update on those recommendations that were brought forward. You can go to next slide here. There you go, just a quick background on that that, you know, last year, you know, June and July, there was a couple recommendations, seven total. I'm sorry, that were brought to you in August, in total, there was you know, recommendations from both the, council and as well as the biker advisory council and urban transportation mission that were combined in one, recommendation, listening to you all and update in August of 20th August 24th last year. You can go next slide . We're going to go through each one of these one by one. We'll give you our understanding from staff recommendation. And next steps on them, so the first one [2:18:55 PM] steps on them, so the first one is focused around really around photo enforcement, you know, basically as from someone from the public entering an Austin three one customer service request, being able to actually, cite the vehicle based off of that photo. Currently, state law doesn't allow us to do any type of photo enforcement when it comes to issuing out citations, additionally, is required by, you know, city code that our parking enforcement officers now mobility service officers, you know, to actually affix that citation to a vehicle, so right now, we do not recommend this, it would require state code change, to allow for this to occur, additionally, you know, issuing out some type of, you know, 25% of revenue collected to, you know, for that citation to the, to the public, right now, citation revenue is not guaranteed, and it goes to the general fund, next slide, recommendation two was develop and implement a volunteer bike lane enforcement program, that [2:19:55 PM] lane enforcement program, that is modeled off the current accessible parking enforcement program that we have here at the city, this is currently not permitted by state law, it requires a state code amendment for appointment. Member of the public to write citations, this is specific to, you know, state transportation code 681, that enacts and allows municipality to create a program like this. Although that there may be other views that that allow us to look at the code, right now, it requires, state code to enact a municipality to, to actually, other than just, you know, Ada citations, we to allow for municipality to enact nonmoving violations, to be issued by a member of the public. Next slide , designate multiple transportation mobility service officers on each shift, to travel by bicycle and primarily focus on issuing citations and warnings if legally parked in a vehicle. Bike lanes. We currently do this and right [2:20:55 PM] currently do this and right after, you know, the recommendation came in August of 23 last year, we dedicated staff to do that, we do have ability to look at hotspots through our csr system, dedicate, you know, our officers to there. We do have, a, you know, a couple bikes that are, do are used by our enforcement officers, but with the amount of csrs and how far out they have to go, it's actually more effective to use a vehicle to get to them as well as a lot safer, which, you know, the ability to use our lighting systems and other things in our enforcement vehicles, since that time frame in August, we've written a little over 300 citations for blocking, parking and bike lane, and actually have towed nine vehicles from them, next slide, alter any relevant ordinances required. A posted sign explicitly making park parking a bike lane, a site of offense, and a set, to create as a default to reserve, position of sanctioned parking and bike lane, you know, this is something in progress. We're [2:21:56 PM] something in progress. We're exploring code change for. So just kind of a little background on it. We do have a permit program that allows commercial vehicles to park in a travel lane, this is currently. Oh. I'm sorry. I'm going to back up. This is recommendation for I apologize, currently, our code doesn't allow for bike lane and, citation to be written. There's nothing explicitly in our code that says that. So right now, our mobility service officers have to, use a two way zone designation to actually write a parking citation. So if there's no signs actually posted along a bike lane, then we cannot write citations. So even if it's designated as a bike lane, it would still require a no parking two way designation for us to actually write the citation in, so this this is actually really pivotal for the rest of the recommendations, because if we are able to make those amendments to 12 dash five to explicitly say that no one's allowed to park in a bike lane like a person may not stop, stand or park a vehicle within a [2:22:57 PM] stand or park a vehicle within a designated bike lane, we would be able to designate other aspects of what a bike lane is designated by, like, you know, markings, it could be the actual bike lane signage. Then we would need actual, other no parking designations to actually write a citation. So anybody that actually parks them, would be able to receive a citation, this is really the most important as we move forward for the other recommendations and pivotal for how our mobility service officers are actually able to enforce, next slide, so, director Austin, department of transportation and public works to update city bicycle maps to indicate where parking the bike lane is allowed, either by a lack of signage or by specific, signage allowed vehicles to park in the bike lane. We do not recommend this and really just I'll jump to the last bullet because I think that kind of sums it up, is that the 2014 and 23 bike plans to recommend a citywide prohibition prohibition of parking, which recommendation four addresses, so once we are able to, make the changes to [2:23:58 PM] able to, make the changes to code for to allow that, we would be allowed to actually be anywhere that's assigned that's currently, for, no parking and a bike lane would, would still stand. But anything else that doesn't have signs currently, would actually able to be enforced, so there would be no really reason to, to actually spend the time and staff money to go, you know, review this and take the time when the designation of this would allow it, through the recommendation number four, and you know, so the 2009 bike plan established that the city will not install bike lanes where parking exists already, and then, you know, the analysis of the 2014 bicycle plan accounted for less than five miles of legacy bike lanes without parking regulations. So if we're able to issue, you know, complete recommendation number four, then we would just spend time to address the, you know, remove parking in the bike lanes that were, resurfaced for pavement preservation, as well as we have feedback through the [2:24:59 PM] as we have feedback through the Austin three one system that people can let us know that where those need to be. Next slide, expand the commercial vehicle loading program program. So this is what I was talking, earlier, and I apologize on on recommendation four, so we currently have a permit program that allows commercial vehicles to park and a travel lane as long as they have a permit, and as long as there's two travel lanes going in one direction, there is certain streets that we do not allow it on based off of high capacity in traffic, but currently it's limited to just the downtown area project coordination zone, we are looking to expand that to the entire city. We believe that this will help with, you know, commercial vehicles right now that may choose to, you know, park in a bike lane, you know, outside of the dapsy, you know, if we were to allow to them to park in a travel lane. So this is kind of just a more encouragement, it also states already in, 12 dash five, 12, that commercial vehicle is in violation of the section. The [2:25:59 PM] violation of the section. The owner or the owner's designee blocks any portion of a designated bike lane, so with the recommendation number four to expand that language for our code ordinance to allow, you know, parking and bike lanes across the city, this will actually help with that as well, next slide. So recommended for engaging the citywide awareness, campaign to create a general common knowledge that bike blocking a bike lane will result in a citation, except for explicitly allowed by posted signage, this is feasible. And again, I think that everything kind of rolls back to recommendation number four to allow code change for that, we would really center that around a campaign awareness. So once we make those changes to code, to allow for, you know, enforcement of bike lane citywide, we can address that through an awareness campaign develop to highlight the, the changes that we just made to the code, next slide. And really, we just, you know, once we make progress on this, we'll of course update you all as, as, as we make those [2:27:01 PM] all as, as, as we make those changes. And I'll take questions from there. >> All right. Thank you for the presentation. We'll open it up and see if there's questions from the committee. Council member harper- madison, why don't you get us started? >> It's not a question. I'll be quick. It's a funny you said citable offense. I thought you said federal offense. I was like, whoa, yeah. >> Yes, I apologize, that is great. >> Go ahead. >> Okay, great, I will go. >> Well, I appreciate the presentation, as someone who lived in downtown and represents downtown, I hate when bike lanes are blocked. It's the worst thing. And anyone who does it is the worst, but but I have a few questions. Yeah. And utc recommendation number six. When it was on the your presentation, I just want to know, are commercial vehicles allowed to load and unload in a travel lane, when there are two or more lanes in each direction outside [2:28:01 PM] lanes in each direction outside of the downtown area, currently within the downtown area. Project coordination zone. So it's a boundary, that was, we use to, to kind of focus on the downtown area. Yeah, and so really we would like to remove that, to allow it to go citywide . That's, that's probably the recommendation. >> Okay. And then how long does it take to get a permit if we expanded that citywide, like, I'm sorry. And what is the cost? >> Yeah, it doesn't take long, there's we have an office you can come down to, and get it within a day. It's just filling out the application, there's different, depending on the type of the size of the vehicle, there's different costs. I don't have those right off hand, but I can send those over to you. And depending on how long they want to occupy the lane for. So for instance, if they want to occupy it for just, 60, you know, an hour, it's a different cost. 30 minutes, a different cost. We have it goes all the way up to two hours, and so this really helped, you know, back in, I think 2014, or so, where we had a lot of the beer trucks that [2:29:04 PM] a lot of the beer trucks that were parking along east sixth street, were complaining they were getting a lot of citations for double parking. This allowed them to do that and get it out efficiently, so based off that, you know, how long they would stay in those positions, that's how much they would pay. >> Got it. >> And then I have a question, staff related, but would staff recommend just updating the city policy to allow loading unloading in a travel lane citywide and use the permanent areas where special considerations are needed, can you say that again? I'm sorry. >> The whole question. Yes. Yeah, I was, would staff recommend just updating city policy to allow loading and unloading in a travel lane citywide and use a permit in areas where special considerations are needed, I believe the code already addresses that. Okay. So I think that would. It's the only thing that wouldn't allow, like, special permitted areas, you know, I think that if we could address that, that could, that could be done. Okay great. >> Thank you. >> On the recommendation number [2:30:09 PM] >> On the recommendation number two that discusses, the ability for volunteers to be able to do these types of citations, is there any debate still happening with staff where like, are all lawyers confident that this is not allowed per state law, or is it still under debate? Because I know there are some conversations happening about why this works with the, the Ada parking and that people can enforce that as volunteer and non-law enforcement official. Where's the dialog on that? And can we can we keep pushing the envelope to, to try to make something work? >> Sure. I think that we'll continue to evaluate that. I think in the day there is some gray area and trying to understand what state law is. I think, what it says now only enacts Ada, assignable offenses through, you know, an appointment, from someone, you know, through a municipality. You know, there's other questions about nonmoving violations and not being separated out, but that still would require other code changes [2:31:10 PM] would require other code changes to do so. And I think that the ability for us to change, you know, these other recommendations first, would allow staff the time to, you know, meet the needs of what we're looking for. We do have ten mso officers in a recommended next budget cycle, as we increase those, it just it's recommended that staff be allowed to, you know, make betterment on these these things that are being asked rather than trying to use civilians right now to another volunteer program that could ask a lot of other questions and concerns when it comes to safety, Ada violations are one thing. Bike lane enforcement is completely indifferent, with the ability to do that, you might create other safety issues. So I think that yes, there's questions about, you know, whether or not this is an active, you know, by state law if it can or not. Our current view of it is that it doesn't it's not allowed by current state law, but we are always evaluating those and can look at that in the future. But we do recommend potentially is allowing for a volunteer program to educate people on the program , and we're not the park. So, [2:32:12 PM] , and we're not the park. So, you know, it could be that volunteers have pamphlets that they hand out to people that potentially are parking in these areas, to, to do that first. >> I appreciate that. And we certainly I share the sentiment of really wanting to educate people and leverage the knowledge of the dangers of parking and bike lanes. What that does to the folks who need to use the bike lane, and having to unexpectedly be forced into the lane of, of traffic where there's vehicles there that may not expect them, so I'm willing to keep having this conversation. I think there's some wins that we can get, one of my favorite tiktok channels is a bicycle cop in Toronto, and her whole channel is about ticketing cars that have just been vacated and are left there in the bike lane. And it's very therapeutic. If anyone needs a recommendation on, on a good a good tiktok channel to watch. So did you say that you were hiring ten new officers for these enforcements or asking asking for them? >> Yes, as we continue to expand out and just on our paid parking system, the ability to the number of customer service requests for just, you know, [2:33:12 PM] requests for just, you know, bike lane enforcement alone, we really need to add the ability to expand that out. So yes, that's what we'll be asking for. >> Okay. Sounds good. Yeah, I know we were, quickly entering conversations around the budget cycle. Again, I know we typically most folks don't kind of look at it until July or August, but we know our departments and our commissions are right now making all their recommendations for what they'd like to see, do you do you know the vacancy rate right now with those officers or is every spot full or are there some vacancies? >> I would have to get back with you on that. But it is tough to keep officers. We do hire temporary officers from time to time, but there's, you know, a lot of turnover, as you can imagine, you know, working in as a mobility service officer or traditionally a parking enforcement officer, it's a challenge, but we are working on ways to continue to, to maintain retention of these employees over time, so I can get back with you on what the retention is currently, and but I am not not on top of my head. I don't have it. >> Okay. >> Yeah, I'm very curious about that. I want to make sure that [2:34:12 PM] that. I want to make sure that you get those. And then I also know with budget cycles, sometimes we calculate things for full time equivalent hours for employees. I just feel like there's a lot of folks in the community that if we didn't have them be full time employees, but they could pick up ten hours a week of doing this. I think there's some, you know, maybe that's a conversation that we can have behind the scenes and sort out the best way to make to make this flexible and to really kind of reach the end goal. Okay, any further questions before we move to the next item? Oh, I'm council member Kelly. >> Thank you, I'm just wondering if there are any other jurisdictions, perhaps in other states, that have made similar code changes and how effective the enforcement of bike lane parking has been in those cities. If you're aware of any, you know, I do know that there's other cities within the state of Texas that might have done other enforcement aspects, like at airports, not specifically bike lane enforcement, but I can definitely, talk with staff and look at other cities, to see if, you know, there's other programs like this. They're not specific to the state of Texas, which is [2:35:13 PM] to the state of Texas, which is it's very specific. What allows us to appoint someone as a volunteer to write citations, so it may vary from state to state depending on the, their state laws. >> Okay. >> Thank you so much. That's all I had. Thank you. >> And that was actually a half of my question. The other half of my question was about, deploying volunteers. To your point, it's difficult to be a parking enforcement officer when you're, an employee and paid. I have some deep concerns about asking volunteers to do that. >> Yes. Thank you. Council member. >> All right. If there's no more questions, I'll just end by saying I appreciated the conversation that vice chair qadri was having about the commercial vehicle, loading and unloading and so we may look at that, or we can talk our offices can talk and see if we want to make sure that if y'all see code changes necessary, that we go ahead and wrap it into this. Just so you already have the council blessing, to be working on the code change part of it, which is where our our [2:36:13 PM] which is where our our resolutions come from. Is council directing code changes. So that's why that might be helpful to be in there, all right. If there's no other questions, let's move to item five. The scooter regulation update. We are almost back on our time target, but we're we're only a few minutes off, so let's move on to item number five. Welcome, director Mendoza. >> Thank you. Committee members, Richard Mendoza, director, transportation and public works. I don't have a presentation, but I did want to take this opportunity to report on some upcoming changes to our department regulations regarding the operations of micromobility devices within our city and more specifically, scooters, as, of for the, shared mobility services. So these changes have been under consideration for some time. And they're meant to address some issues that we have been having some challenges with [2:37:14 PM] been having some challenges with addressing, for the service. But let me let me back up a moment and begin with, I am not anti scooter, and I understand that in terms of providing a service, especially with regards to last mile connectivity, this recent, asset and service has filled a very valuable space for our community. However, you know, with anything new, there's a period of adjustment and there's a of an experience of perhaps some unintended added, challenges that we've been encountering. And, just to be more specific, those are really centered around safety, around the proliferation, Ann and clustering of these devices, which has been impacting the general esthetics of our community, Ada compliance, a blocking Ada, sidewalks impacting storefronts, where, [2:38:14 PM] impacting storefronts, where, scooter behavior and where these devices may be left off has impaired, you know, good access to businesses. And then in the environment, we were challenged and then working with watershed protection for these some of these devices found their ways and into some of our water waterways, which presented significant environmental concerns. And so from that perspective, myself and my team started looking at our current resources and some adjustments that we could be made so that we could better, manage micromobility services in our city as well, given our, our, our current resources. And, you know, a lot of cities have struggled with this issue around the country. We've looked at examples of peer cities around the country, and they've taken different approaches all the way from total moratorium on elimination of all scooters and then bring them back in slowly, [2:39:18 PM] then bring them back in slowly, such as the city of Dallas. They just recently allowed 500 more devices, 500 devices, to reenter, their community, to, hardscape, infrastructure to control the placement and staging of these devices and what we really wanted to do was work with our vendors and, first have a dialog around these challenges that we're experiencing in our community and seek them as partners on what we can do to make adjustments so that we can effectively address some of the challenges we've been experiencing. So those meetings started in my conference room, late last fall. Met with the leadership of, at that time, three vendors. At that time, we had, permitted upwards of 14,000 device spaces citywide. And for the downtown area alone, we were permitted permitting up to 5000, devices, that in and of itself, presented a challenge for our [2:40:21 PM] presented a challenge for our department to effectively manage that amount of, of devices. So, we had suggested, some changes that reduced the amount of permitted devices. Subsequently, one of those approved permitted vendors, link, ceased operations. So we were down to two vendors, I made the decision to hold the line on the two vendors until we can effectively work with these, providers to better manage, micro mobility services in the city. And then I proposed some reductions in the total numbers of permitted devices, with the aim of having it more manageable and so, originally, I had intended to move forward with these changes at the beginning of this year, however, I did continue to get feedback, from some council members as well as the mayor and the vendors themselves. We [2:41:22 PM] the vendors themselves. We continued our conversations and, have arrived now, I think, at a place where we can provide and assure quality services, address the safety concerns, address the just general overall proliferation and concentration and clustering of these devices throughout the city. And then I gave assurances to these vendors that we will continue to monitor going forward every six months, on the number of permitted devices, as well as be flexible while understanding that large events like south by southwest acl, drive up the demand for these devices and we would make those special allowances for them to provide those. So that's just a little, background of kind of where we were, the challenges that we were encountering and the process that we engaged with the vendors to arrive at these changes that I'm reporting on, this afternoon [2:42:23 PM] I'm reporting on, this afternoon . So just starting at the top, we're going to we've reduced the number of licensed micro mobility vendors. We currently have two. I'm holding firm. I've not received any applicants for additional vendors to come to town in this interim period. So we're holding the line at at two. That makes it more manageable for our staff to, to affect these regulations, number two, again, I'm holding a moratorium on new vendor licenses, the number of permitted e-scooters citywide, we're down to 8700 with the exit of that one vendor. And I am going to restrict that to a total of 6700. In conversation with the vendors they shared with me, even though we had historically permitted much more, many more devices, they typically on any one day don't have any more than the 6 to 7000 mobilized, except for in those [2:43:24 PM] mobilized, except for in those occasions when we have the large special, events. So this really, holds pretty level. The amount of permitted devices to the last two remaining scooter vendors. I am going to discontinue the use of the dockless e-bikes. It was reported earlier that we received a, a, txdot grant, working with our partners at capmetro to expand our, metro bike and e-bike, docking system. So we're going to be completely electrifying our fleet and then expanding the number of docking stations, throughout the city. The issue and challenge I had with the dockless bikes is that when they are inappropriately, left or or, staged or parked, there are a lot more obstruction to Ada and sidewalks, more so than, say, a scooter, I heard back from the vendors, they said, well, well, director, what about, seated scooters? And you [2:44:25 PM] about, seated scooters? And you may have seen a couple of examples of these around town, and, I believe lime has some of those in the city. I'm fine with those. They're not any larger than a standard, scooter. They allow a seated position while riding, the scooters. So discontinue of, dockless e-bikes in the downtown space itself. Currently. You know, we do have geofence Singh that restricts the use of these primarily around the state, capital, but we do have a high concentration of these devices, for obvious reasons. We have a very active mobility population in our urban core area, but we feel that we can still provide sufficient service to our community, reducing the maximum allowable number, from 4500 to 2250, another issue that we had, really struggling with trying to address were reports of serious [2:45:26 PM] address were reports of serious head injury, for operators of these micro devices. And many of these are occurring in the late night hours, you can imagine, perhaps, some of our more rambunctious population exiting the bars in, not 100% capacity, trying to operate a scooter. These things really need your full attention when you're out there mixing it up with with traffic and trauma centers were, observing, a number of serious head injuries that were attributable to, scooters. So, with that and with that in mind, and they can do this, with the geofencing is reducing the maximum speed of that operation of that scooter. At first I, I recommended reducing wholesale down from the current 15 miles an hour to ten miles an hour. However the vendors did share with me that there is a, you know, sizable population of our service providers that that late at night they rely on these [2:46:28 PM] at night they rely on these devices for their mobility, to commute home and so and I, I backed up a little bit. Okay. So between these hours and these hours, these are when the, the bars close. And in the general downtown, area. But that's just an example of the partnership and how we work with the vendors on these proposed, changes. Another thing just to improve the quality of the placement and control the concentration of an overabundance of these devices in any one location, we will be working with the vendors for a signed, restacking and staging areas at the beginning of each day. I intend to do this with, markings. And so, and that will ensure two things that, that we don't have an over proliferation or concentration of these scooters in any one area, and that that might impact, Ada and sidewalk and other, users of our, our right of way. So that's [2:47:29 PM] our, our right of way. So that's an overview of my, plan changes. I plan to implement these April 1st. We'll be working with the scooters on the, the implementation implementation of these over the next 30 days. The actual marking of the staging areas. My team will be working with the vendors and identifying those appropriate, spots throughout our community between now and through the summer. So thank you. All right. >> Let's open it up for questions. I figured vice chair qadri would probably have some, given that you represent the downtown area and probably hear about scooters quite a bit. >> Yeah, I think it might be one of our biggest, complaints we get in the office, and I know it's a big complaint for 311, and I know that takes up a lot of time and resources for them, my first question, you answered it with your last statement. I was gonna ask you what timeline? What's the timeline on the changes, you mentioned April first, so that's that's exciting, second question. I [2:48:29 PM] exciting, second question. I wanted to know what kind of stakeholder engagement, was done outside of, the scooter vendors. So outside of scooter vendors who did you all reach out to in terms of stakeholders? >> So I will confess that I only worked with the scooter vendors and operators, on these changes from the standpoint that it, safety, item that needs to be addressed and as my, responsibility as the director of transportation and public works, I saw a duty to move forward with these in a more rapid fashion, than what we would typically do. >> Got it, I know one of the recommendations. When we spoke to tpw was to remove scooters from congress Ave, are you still proposing this? Is that something? >> That's that's still in conversations right now? We have a project, you know, reimagining, congress avenue is the main street of Texas. I've only started this dialog with the vendors, and we'll have [2:49:32 PM] the vendors, and we'll have those conversations when we start designating the specific, staging, places. But really, that idea is just to, you know, affect the esthetic of. That's one of our main view corridors, for our city, rather than place them right on congress avenue, you know, and I'll continue to have these conversations. What would be the impact, if any, if we just moved them around the corner on the side streets? >> Yeah. >> I mean, I think for me it's not as much about the visual clutter. It's just more about accessibility and safety. Correct, you know, can people park their car, their destination on downtown? I still want to use limited, access. I don't want to limit accessibility, for folks. Yeah. >> And I haven't included that in this in this update right now for that purpose. >> Great, so I have two more questions, as part of this effort, is staff going to implement scoot corrals on streets, maybe taking an on street parking space or putting them near intersection clearance [2:50:33 PM] them near intersection clearance Zones, so all those will be on the table we'll want to look for is two things. One, ensuring that, you know, the service is readily available, but primarily from a safety perspective, that it is an impact. Our Ada compliant science. And, you know, we just need to reach a medium where all these modes of mobility can coexist harmoniously, harmoniously in the same space. >> Great. This is this is more I just out of curiosity, off of this question, have you seen other cities implement like scooter docking stations, scooter scooter corral stations? >> Yes we do. >> There are some examples that that we've seen in other cities. The challenge with that is it takes significant capital investment. We did just an initial, estimate of the number of corrals needed and placements for vertical. You know, hard infrastructure. It's on upwards [2:51:33 PM] infrastructure. It's on upwards on the number of one, $1.2 million. And you know, the only funding we have for mobility right now is already planned and committed, to programs like bikeways, urban trails, sidewalks. So it would come at the expense of those other programs. And I felt, well, let's take baby steps. Let's see how we do with just the markings. It's rather low cost. And we can also evaluate after a period of time. They're easy to relocate versus hardened infrastructure. >> What is you said it's low cost. >> What is that cost. >> That's just pavement markings. Okay, striping. Yeah. >> Very low cost. Yes. Okay. Great yeah, I think high level, you know, we agree with I agree with staff's assessment of better managing our pedestrian realm with scooters. And I applaud the effort, to think about how to prevent fatalities and serious injuries downtown during late night hours, but, you know, still some concerns about some of these recommendations, and I'd really like to see changes to be [2:52:33 PM] like to see changes to be considered more holistically, with the vision zero implementation for downtown and overall street safety, but that kind of segues into my last question, I think it would be helpful to bring this through some more engagement for review and feedback. I know you mentioned the stakeholder engagement was, as of now, just scooter vendors, would staff be open starting a shared micro mobility working group or work through an existing commission to create such a working group? >> Well, certainly I will spend the next six months, evaluating the see if we're getting the desired, enhanced efforts to the program and we'll engage stakeholders along that process. >> Great. >> Thank you so much, all right. Any other questions? Quick time check it is 253. This is our last item, but I have a few more things I need to announce before we close up. Go ahead. Chito vela. Thank you. Just a real quick. The the changes to the dockless e-bikes permit. That does not affect the capital [2:53:33 PM] does not affect the capital metro program expansion, because that's a docked, bike program. Is that correct? >> That's correct. >> This does not impact the partnership with cap metro and the dockless e- bikes. I mean, the docked, e-bikes. >> Got it, got it. And then just, from in terms of the overall, what was the impetus, the overall impetus for the new micromobility, regulations? >> It was primarily around, safety, trying to manage, you know, serious head injuries and then the overall, kind of concentration and clustering over clustering of devices, impacting Ada access, storefront access, and also we in, we plan to, and we already have in place an education campaign for users. A lot of this is user behavior and appropriate, you know, once you complete your trip, how do you appropriate only place that device once you're finished using that. So we'll continue that education campaign. Thank [2:54:36 PM] that education campaign. Thank you. >> Director. >> Yeah. Chairman, also in your packet is the city of Austin mobility report for your review. Got one more question before we jump to that. >> Sorry. That's all right. That's all right. I appreciate that, I just wanted to flag. I know we're a little short on time today, but I know over the years I've had conversations with some of the transportation and public works staff about it, about the inflexibility of the way the metro bike program works, specifically that if you want to keep it for longer than, let's say, an hour, you have to go find a bay to dock it in and recheck out the bike. And so, we've had some conversations around the flexibility of where are those docks? How does that regulation work, and so I just want to flag that and we can continue the conversation offline. But trying to understand, you know, all the population that isn't served by metro bike, even though they are expanding and we're looking forward to that, trying to understand a little bit better about how we can provide more of a safer bicycle rental type of [2:55:37 PM] a safer bicycle rental type of service or program, that is not docked. And so I just want to kind of put a flag in that for today, but would love to have more conversation around some of the other needs and ideas that I've been able to talk with some folks about. But I see the issue you're trying to solve and just want to make sure we're, going to be able to look at that. So I'll just I'll flag that for right now. >> One more question. >> Yeah. He there's another report, that he's going to daylight. So is it on this topic? >> It's on this topic. Okay. I'll give you 30 30s. >> Okay, great. I'll do my best. And I'm already wasting time, I guess my question was, if I know you said implementation would start on April 1st, but there's still we could still do a good amount of, community stakeholder engagement if we were to delay the implementation start date and do that stakeholder engagement, would that affect anything? >> The only effect it would have, council member, is, you know, we would continue to operate under the current [2:56:37 PM] operate under the current conditions and we're still you know, at risk of further injuries and having to continue, managing the number of scooters with regards to the clustering and Ada access, we were we've already delayed it, two months from January. That was our original implementation date. I met with these vendors as far back as November to make them aware, and based on just feedback and working with them, we've already pushed this back from, January to April. So I really would prefer that we just move this forward. >> Got it. Okay. Thanks >> Okay, now on to the last item. >> Okay. And in your packet is the city of Austin mobility, report, for the public. Just some highlights, of course, the announcement a couple of weeks ago that Austin was a recipient of a neighborhood access equity grant and the amount of $105 million, for the cap and stitch project between Cesar Chavez and [2:57:39 PM] project between Cesar Chavez and fourth avenue, transportation public works also unveiled the inaugural annual report. So, you know, please take time to review that, on your free time. Also, some highlights from our Austin, airport and then got a busy upcoming spring festival season. So just asking the public to, be aware and be safe. During that time. >> Certainly appreciate that, on that note, we are down to the identification of future items, in April, we are going to be merging our meetings with housing and planning. So we have chair harper-madison here that also serves on this committee, so we will not have a separate mobility committee that day, and she will be working on that schedule. But I know there's a lot of conversations that we've been having that are very much an overlap around land use planning and mobility issues. Some of those topics, that we had also talked about at the [2:58:39 PM] had also talked about at the most recent housing and planning committee meeting, discuss issues like itod planning, downtown parking compatibility standards, home phase two initiative, efforts. And so we look forward to having that agenda come out and merging our committees, and we'll invite the entire council to join. If those are conversations that people are available to attend and have want to have some input on those issues. As we further those conversations. And then may is national bike month, it's also air quality awareness week in may and world asthma day. So we're going to be focusing our agenda again. It's going to be around metro bike fleet electrification, air quality and transportation in, and urban trails and sidewalk programs updates. Potentially. We always work with transportation staff to make sure that we've got all of our timelines synced up, and then we know future items will want to discuss the shoal creek trail, Barton springs road vision pilot program construction partnership program, memorandum of understanding, airport expansion [2:59:39 PM] understanding, airport expansion and Ada accessibility, and street impact fees. And then we have a whole long back burner list of other ideas that we have shared across the years. And so hopefully we'll be able to get those plugged into certain months as appropriate. And with one minute left, do we have any suggestions for future items we'd like to? Yes. >> One of our speakers spoke about connectivity with trails and looking at the potential for, you know, he called it eastlink, but eastlink, boggy creek, boggy creek, walnut creek, shoal, I mean, like really thinking about a true connected, you know, city trail system. I would like for us to maybe dive into that. I know that's kind of a bigger one, but, if eventually we could address that on the mobility committee. >> Absolutely. We will add that to the list and see if we could even, maybe merge it with something that we're already trying to talk about. So I love that conversation, and I think that would be really enlightening for us to be able to take that up. So on that note, if there's no other duties to take care of, it is 3:00 on [3:00:41 PM] to take care of, it is 3:00 on the dot and I am adjourning the mobility committee meeting.