Mobility Committee (MOBC) meeting Transcript – 7/17/2025 Title: ATXN-1 Channel: 1 - ATXN-1 Recorded On: 7/17/2025 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 7/17/2025 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. [12:59:20 PM] the City of Austin's Government Access Channel welcome to the mobility [1:04:06 PM] welcome to the mobility committee. We're having a little bit of technical difficulty, but we're going to make it work on the fly. It is now 100 and 4 P.M, and we have all members of the mobility committee here present, and we are in the Borden commission room at Austin city hall. Did we end up having any public communication speakers sign up? No. Okay. Well, then we will get started with business. So public communication. We don't have any speakers. Let's get a motion for the approval of the minutes for may 15th, 2025. We have a motion by vice chair qadri, seconded by council member harper- madison. And then instead of going straight to item number two, we are going to move to item number five, which ended up being posted as item number five. But it is usually the next item we take up, which is an update from the urban transportation commission. I believe we have Mr. Schumacher available today. Perfect. I see him getting loaded on the webex. Now. [1:05:06 PM] loaded on the webex. Now. Welcome. >> Thank you. Welcome. Thank you. Charles. Vice chair qadri and the rest of the council members. I think I have a presentation if that can be uploaded. I know you got a busy agenda, so I'm going to try to speed through this. >> We do have that presentation. >> Lovely. I'll wait for that to get uploaded. Then I'll start. All right. So these are our actions from our June meeting and also our July meeting. We can go ahead and go to the next slide. So in June we focused a lot on the residential parking program proposed rule, which I believe the final rule was posted yesterday. There are a lot of things we think are really great in this. The expansion of hybrid parking regulations, which is made possible by the parking modernization ordinance that the city council passed a little while ago. There's a lot of expansion for multi-family residents to be able to participate in certain functions, like getting day passes, which we think is good. A lot of consultation with the neighborhood and reevaluation criteria to make sure these [1:06:07 PM] criteria to make sure these Zones are still useful. One thing we wanted to change from the get go was, you know, there's still this old language about the purpose of the program being to make it easier for residents to find an open parking spot. And we thought that, you know, maybe that was the case in when it was first created in west campus, right. But today, that's not really how the program used. It's really to be a tool in the tool belt. When we have an over parked curb in a residential area. So we suggested that they change that purpose from the get go. They put much better language than we suggested here. So that is in the final rule. And we can go the next slide. One thing that utc has been really focused on is we do want to make sure that this isn't just a program that benefits single family renters and homeowners and small multifamily. We want some benefits to be available to multi-family residential properties. One thing we suggested was allowing them to have visitor permits, especially for many of our multi-family complexes that don't have visitor parking. That was one thing that was not included in [1:07:09 PM] thing that was not included in the final rule. And we've also asked the transportation public works department to think about, you know, if we can't include multifamily in Erp parking, you know, let's think about some ways that we can still allow some sort of commensurate benefits, that the benefits aren't only going to single family homeowners and renters, you know, whether that be extra loading and drop off spaces, park atx codes especially. That's helpful when there's parking or hybrid parking in that area. The next thing the commission was really focused on is figuring out ways that we can make sure that small commercial businesses aren't adversely harmed by rrp. So the first thing we asked for was some sort of way that we can add employees of adjacent cultural venues and businesses as interested parties whenever they an rrp is, is planned so they can be part of that process. And also to ask, you know, whether we could ingratiate those employees into the program, similar to the affordable parking program, and create a way for them to also have secured parking close to [1:08:09 PM] have secured parking close to those businesses. And those were things that the department said they wanted to look in further. So they weren't adopted in this rule, but they could be adopted in the future. And then we'll go ahead to our July item, which should be on the next page. So the nato, the national association of city transportation officials, which we modeled a lot of our policy off, has long suggested on arterial roadways that we should have around a ten feet wide width. And this is one place where in the transportation criteria manual, we are not aligned with nacda. So we issued a recommendation for level three and level four streets to align with these nato standards. And there's good reason to focus on these streets. There's a lot of evidence that for, you know, each foot you increase Laine width. You get about a 2.3mph bump in the speed somewhere around there. There's also great study from Johns Hopkins that shows these arterial streets, when they're 12ft, are actually the most dangerous type you can have, right? Because they're [1:09:10 PM] have, right? Because they're they're not wide enough to be forgiving, but they're not narrow enough to get slow speeds. So what we recommended is that we start with these level three and level four streets. And instead of starting with an 11 foot or 12.5ft street, we start with a 10 or 11 foot street. And when it's constrained, even go lower and then have those contextual uses that would ask ourselves, do we really need a 12 foot Laine here? Is there some extenuating circumstance? The other thing is, right now we design all of our outside Laine travel widths to be accommodating for freight and for transit. I think it's better to consider that on a case by case basis. One thing nato recommends is, is whether 10% of the traffic there is expected to be freight, or whether there's a transit route. So we think that's a good standard for the transportation public works to adopt and the transportation criteria manual. And you can see a table of how what we're recommending changes from the TCM. And we can go to the next page. All right. And [1:10:11 PM] the next page. All right. And the other thing we recommended was that tpw consider doing a Laine width audit similar to the very successful speed audit they did, so that we can really look at which of these arterials are overbuilt and could be candidates for street paving, to maybe redo some of those lanes and give us a couple of extra widths. And the final part was, you know, ideally the transportation criteria manual is always talking to the Austin strategic mobility plan. So whenever the city council does consider, you know, some smp amendments in the future, we think it would make sense to include some target indicators for Laine width reduction so that we have some sort of metric to evaluate this. So hopefully if we can get this implemented not only mean safer streets, but we also have, you know, those extra couple feet on arterial roadways that could allow us to, you know, put in a street tree or perhaps put protection between the bicycle Laine and pedestrian Laine, you know, do some things that that we're not always able to do when we have really wide Laine widths. So those are two recommendations, and I'm happy to answer any questions and let you guys get on with your meeting. [1:11:12 PM] on with your meeting. >> We appreciate the presentation. Are there any questions from committee members? I don't believe so. Seems like it was quite thorough. Thank you. >> Thanks. Take care. >> Perfect. And the next item that we are going to move on to will be item number two, which is the update on amendments to city code related to parking regulations, including current compliance rates and challenges. Welcome. >> Thank you. Chair. Hello. Good afternoon, council members. My name is Joseph zo qadri. I am the parking enterprise manager for transportation public works. I have my assistant director here, Lewis lafko, help with anything we got going on? Do we have the clicker? Just do it. Okay? Okay. Sounds good. All right, so, like the title says their parking code modernization. We committed to come back to speak to a couple [1:12:12 PM] come back to speak to a couple of items and wanted to provide an update on the recent code changes that happened back in February. You can go to the next slide. So we'll give some background. We'll talk about some enforcement challenges that we've gone through, understanding some of these code changes. And in general just enforcement practices as a whole. And like we committed to come back to talk to mailing parking citations, which was one of the code changes in there and some of the implementation elements that go along with that, including some next steps. So, you know, back in February, we passed a parking code modernization that came out from council resolution to increase bike Laine enforcement. A part of that was to change code to allow us to enforce bike lanes more effectively, as well as some other codes that need to be updated to legacy codes. And a part of that was changing 12 dash 556, which allowed us to possibility at transportation public works to mail parking related citations. And that's why we're here today to talk more about that next slide. And here's a quick update on what [1:13:15 PM] here's a quick update on what has gone on so far since that code has passed. You know, bike Laine enforcement has picked up. We, you know, committed to do warnings and a period to inform the public about these changes. And during that time, we wrote about 270 warning citations through may. We started on June 1st writing actual citations after that period of time. And we've so far have written 80 citations. We have a dedicated route of enforcement officers that go out and look at bike Laine infractions. And we're also looking at other ways of picking up that enforcement through bike enforcement on congress. But in the meantime, as you can see, we've had 516 bike Laine enforcement customer service requests. So this is still, you know, huge issue that we're seeing around town, people calling in. And our enforcement efforts, of course have increased. But we, you know, try our best to get to them as fast as we can. But it's spread out throughout the city and then going on, you know, just kind of [1:14:15 PM] going on, you know, just kind of what Mr. Schumacher had mentioned. We recently just passed the arp director's rules. We had a really good survey that I got a lot of community feedback and really gave us an input to be able to make those changes possible, and we're proud that we're able to post those final rules recently. Next slide. So let's talk about some challenges and enforcement. As you all know, we've seen an increase in demand for curb space downtown. There's many challenges with that. You know many new businesses, many different types of uses for curb space as well as new mobility alternatives, which y'all are going to hear in the next presentation coming up about automated vehicles, all these are, you know, bringing pressures to be able to for us to enforce correctly and more efficiently. We also have increased parking areas, as we see geographically, as our city starts to grow, that curb space that that man becomes needed to be managed. And we need to be able to find ways to enforce that more consistently. As we know, parking enforcement has [1:15:16 PM] know, parking enforcement has hazards. You know, we have many confrontations that happen continuously throughout. As a parking enforcement officer that used to work, you know, both during the daytime and nighttime, I can tell you firsthand that it can be very contentious when someone is not happy about getting a parking citation, and we're not law enforcement. So it's a little bit different. We try our best to manage those confrontations in the safe way we can, as well as getting to violations that would require us to stop or stop our vehicle to get out. That just creates two more of the mobility challenge for the rest of the public to get in and out of our city and safely for our officers as well. Over time, since I've been here 15 years, we've constantly updated our code to be able to enforce more efficiently. But there's been a misalignment with the way that we currently do parking enforcement with our current technologies and strategies that we do things to meet that modernized code and what we're doing. And we also wanted to speak to a little bit on on compliance and what we know now. [1:16:17 PM] compliance and what we know now. There is no baseline that we currently understand that helps us get to a real true compliance number. Usually there's percentages to understand. We're tracking that information more frequently now to understand that. But we do can say anecdotally that although we've made code changes, there's still increases in parking citations. That could be due to number of new enforcement officers changing in routes, but doesn't give us a real, true understanding of how compliance is actually happening. And so we're working on, you know, understanding that. But one thing that's good to say is that, and I think we all can say this, that more consistent enforcement brings more consistent compliance. Someone knows they're going to get a citation in an area they're going to they're going to get the behavior change that that we want to see. But of course, that's limited to the resources that we have. Next slide. So let's talk about citation that can how that can help. You know one of the things that we look [1:17:19 PM] one of the things that we look for is increased accountability and safety and efficiency in parking enforcement. So just like I spoke to, you know, when you have confrontations that limits the ability for enforcement officers or the 516 or so or more csrs that we got, a good percentage of those are drives offs. We can't get to them fast enough. Or if we get there, the person's moving by them. So really, there's no incentive for someone to not park in those locations as they, you know, continuously we see issues with consistent enforcement through a citation program can help that. It reduces the confrontation, the interaction between staff, and allows us to send out more clear citation information to the public. So we also limit block blockage of travel lanes as well. Like I mentioned before, stopping and having to write a citation. Enforcement officers are also causing traffic backups in those. In those scenarios, being able to stop and create those issues, you know, spoke to conflict reduction between the [1:18:23 PM] conflict reduction between the public and enforcement officers, compliance and capacity. I think, you know, what's really important is that we have a growing city and needs to be able to enforce many different violations, and our mobility system and capacity for enforcement officers as a manual, you know, process can be very daunting to get to these locations. So mailing citations can be a way to allow us to add more capacity to enforce more effectively throughout the geographical areas of our city. And again, and I can't stress this enough, enforcement consistency and be able to create that consistency within enforcement and locations that are important to create behavior change we need to see in safety are so important. Next slide. So what are some of the considerations that we need to think about mailing citations? I wanted to give you an idea of what a mailing citation could look like. So first we identify and verify the violation and vehicle information. And then at that point the registered owner is identified. And then we mail [1:19:24 PM] is identified. And then we mail that citation. Now for the current system in municipal court there's some challenges. They have a current system, new court software that they're implementing that it wasn't configured or thought about to add a mailing parking citation program. So that would cause some challenges for us. Regardless, there would need to be a third party integration for us to have a vendor to mail out notices. This is someone that's going to identify the vehicle owner, registered owner of that vehicle, and be able to mail that citation out in an effective amount of time to have to respond to it. And then, you know, there's other enforcement technology available for us to do that. And it really can be customized. And we, you know, looked at other cities and wanted to find better ways for our enforcement officers to have that, that resource to them so that, that we can effectively enforce. And of course, anything we do with technology, we would honor any of the prior council resolutions that focus on data collection and retention, as that is super important to us to ensure privacy within that public data. Next step slide. So [1:20:24 PM] public data. Next step slide. So what is our proposed next steps? We're really going to focus on collaboration with mister court, understand their processes and outcomes and how they adjudicate their citations and how we integrate with their systems. And with that implementation approach, could look like we're currently working on a scope and metrics for potential pilot understanding the different various types of technology that would be available to us, and enforcement, and trying to create some metrics to evaluate a pilot effectively, including data privacy procurement process for third party vendor. We would start looking at what the right approach is for us to do that and onboard a vendor and really look at different products and integration capabilities to ensure that things run smoothly through that system. And of course, we'd bring this back to council for review and approval before we move forward with anything. And that's all I have. Thank you all very much. >> Thank you. I appreciate the presentation. I know that our earlier conversations were [1:21:25 PM] earlier conversations were because council member vela was curious about this mailing of citation issue. I don't know if you want to kick off some questions, or if you want someone else to start. Happy to chair. Thank you so much. What other cities do citation by mail. >> So there's many cities that do it. You know, we've been speaking to like Pittsburgh. There's some other cities in California that have moved to mailing citations. A lot of universities mail citations. It's more effectively to get around like parking garages and other systems and a lot of cities that have less staff available to them. >> Anybody in Texas? >> Yes. Currently galveston does mailing of citations. >> Dallas. >> Galveston. >> Oh, galveston. >> Yeah. Along the seawall there, they were having a lot of conflicts between, you know, the public and unfortunately, inebriated public that would talk to a parking enforcement officer, that would a parking citation that would now turn into someone getting arrested. And so in this case, that limited that. And they now have mailing citation program to [1:22:28 PM] mailing citation program to limit that. >> And in terms of the because right now and again, I don't know the exact time frames, but you know, you get the early kind of payment and then if you don't pay it within that time frame, it, you know, again, I don't know the exact number, but $20 to $40 or whatever the case may be for the okay, how does that change under a mailing scenario? Because the concern here and I say this both from personal experience, from multiple conversations with other people in particularly in the criminal justice and honestly, immigration people don't check their mailboxes. Everything is digital and people just don't check their mailboxes. So no one is really going to realize that they or I shouldn't say no one, but many people will not realize they have a parking citation until well past the early payment date. And all of a sudden they're looking at, you know, a pretty significant fine or fee. What do you thinking [1:23:29 PM] or fee. What do you thinking about in terms of implementation, as far as the kind of grace period that we give somebody? >> Yeah. So currently it's 20 days that moves to 30 days under the new mailing citation process, but that that time does not start until the actual citation is identified and then actually mailed. And once it's mailed, there's a perceived date of when they should receive it, which I believe it's seven days. I'll double check on that. And once it's that perceived date is hit, they still have the 20 days from that point. So it turns out it's a total of 30 days. And we understand that sensitivity. So one of the things that we talked about as far as the metrics in the pilot is really focusing on how do we do this and understand it. And it could be warning citations, you know, at the beginning to understand how they get into the owner. And if they're picking it up and seeing it. And a lot of the companies, these third party vendors that mail out are very efficient. And so they can understand when there's bounce backs and other things that come along with mailing any type of citations. So we're definitely sensitive to that and trying to understand what's the best approach and [1:24:30 PM] what's the best approach and figuring out the best way to evaluate that during the pilot. >> What are we going to do with bounce backs? Because again, a lot of people don't update their car registration even though they've moved like three times or, you know, whatever the case may be or like the registration might still be at mom's house and, you know, they haven't lived there for ten years or again, whatever the case may be, right? >> Yeah. So the third party, you know, is the one that handles those. What's great about that is currently the way that we do registered vehicle information is that we only have the state of Texas. If you have a third party that does it, it's all 50 states. So even if there's out of state, you know, they're going to be able to send that information out to them. And we understand that, you know, there's issues with it and something that we're still trying to learn on. So I don't have a direct answer on how effectively we'd be able to answer it. Then. That's a part of our evaluation process when we work with any third party vendor. >> And then the other, I mean, the accountability. I think there's a lot to be said for someone who comes back and immediately sees that citation on their window in terms of accountability, getting that 25 days later in the mail, you're [1:25:30 PM] days later in the mail, you're like, I don't even remember. You know what this is? Again, in terms of changing behavior, obviously both have some effect, but the just the distance between the kind of notice of the violation from the date of the violation is a concern in terms of, again, wanting to change behavior. I don't even know what I did, you know, I mean, there may be a photo, but again, there's a lot of it was just so long ago or I wasn't driving the car. We have a lot of, you know, households that share vehicles. So who's got this ticket, those kinds of things like that. That also just concerns me in terms of if we're talking about actual accountability for the behavior of the person involved. >> Yeah. Council member Lewis, left, assistant director, dpw. I think it's a fair point. I think that's why we're looking at rolling this out in a very kind of slow and narrow fashion first. And maybe it's a pilot. We could, you know, name it what we'd like to name it, but making sure that we understand what those impacts are and start to [1:26:31 PM] those impacts are and start to see what that data and the metrics coming back saying. How many repeat offenders do we see with the mailing of citations relative to somebody getting on their car? Is there a significant, statistically significant difference between that? I think that's why we want to try something and see how it goes first, before we start to do a full blown program around mailing citations. >> All right, all right. Well, I got to digest all this. You know, I've expressed concerns, qualms. I need to digest all that. I appreciate the presentation. I really have to think through this in terms of how it's going to affect the general public. Again, my sense would be that would I hate to make the analogy, but, you know, you red light cameras and those kinds of things like that, I don't know how well received it would be that that's my, my, my main concerns. >> I appreciate that we've got questions from vice chair qadri. >> Great. >> Thank you. Chair. Before I get to my questions though, I want to. I mean, I agree with councilmember vela. When I was [1:27:33 PM] councilmember vela. When I was an undergrad at UT, I got one parking citation. It was right on my dashboard. I was really, but I knew that I did it and I never got one after that. And then, you know, to his point, you know, having it sent to you in the mail and receiving it X amount of days later and you're like, hey, I don't know if I even did this. I think I'm being framed. So anyway, just I agree with what councilmember vela had said on page four. You had the all the numbers of the bike Laine enforcement issues, 270 warnings, 80 citations, 516 requests. Out of curiosity, is there a are there hot points throughout the city? >> Yes. Thank you councilmember. Yeah, there is hot points around the city that we've seen. We also match up our customer service request data to see if there's more frequent areas that we can enforce. And we our officers try to make sure to get to those areas as fast as they can. And then we have a route that they take that's pretty consistent, and they'll change that route based off of those hotspots to see if they can get to them sooner. [1:28:34 PM] to them sooner. >> Out of curiosity, do you know some of those hotspots downtown might be some south congress? >> Yeah. So yes, you know, I think congress avenue is probably one of the biggest ones that we have issues with. And so we're currently working on a way for it to have more frequent enforcement every 30 minutes or so along both sides of congress, just because that is a frequent spot. There's also some other spots here and there, but I don't have them top of my head. But I can definitely get back to you on those. >> Great. And then you had mentioned during the presentation enforcement challenges due to the coverage expansion. So I have two questions. Do we have an update on the curbside management study? >> Yeah, we have currently starting that process. We're doing stakeholder. We've got the consultant. We've done some stakeholder committee. Sorry. Stakeholder engagement internal first. We're working on that. And it's still on track to have something by next year in April. >> April of 26. >> Yes. >> Great. Just to clarify that will be the draft. And I think what we committed to was kind of [1:29:35 PM] what we committed to was kind of late spring, early summer, bringing that final plan back to council. So we are still on that time frame. April will probably be like the first draft and we'll be going, you know, multiple iterations of that. But we would expect April may time frame, being able to come back to council and provide some updates on that as desired by this committee. >> Great. And then second question, do you think now is a good time to start exploring a volunteer parking enforcement options? I think something that was recommended in the original resolution or even deputizing folks to kind of, you know, be the boots on the ground. >> That's that's a great question, councilmember. I think that's something we'd have to take back again. We've we've come and definitely have put our opinion out there as a department on on how we feel about the potential of that. There's definitely a lot of safety implementations that come into deputizing the public. Like, I've just spoke to you about my personal experience, you know, handing out citations to folks in an official capacity, and that becomes a huge issue. And so I can't say more than that. I would think [1:30:36 PM] more than that. I would think that we can come back as a department and speak to that. But in my personal opinion that there's some issues around, you know, safety that are something that I'd be worried about. Great. >> That's it for me, chair. Thank you. >> Let's go to council member harper-madison. >> Thank you. Appreciate it I appreciate that that's how you guys ended it because that's my primary concern. So I was listening to your concern, councilmember vela. And I was thinking like, if I had to think, what's my concern here, that people won't be offered the opportunity to access the bill in time to not incur increased, you know, excuse me? Justice consequences or the safety of our staff. And I'm leaning in the direction of the safety of our staff. There's like four parts in this presentation where you referred to safety, and then you referred to safety again. And then so I was already thinking about it. So in councilmember or vice chair qadri said, the thing about deputizing people, I don't think [1:31:37 PM] deputizing people, I don't think that's a good idea at all. I have to say, though, I am. I know that code officers have some similar challenges, and I've even heard about folks getting, you know, folks giving them a hard time. And so my immediate thought there is one, it feels like this presentation should be given at the public safety committee also, because it sounds like there's a deeper issue around the safety of our staff. You shouldn't have to, you know, go to the thunderdome in order to dispense a citation. So I'm just wondering, how do we get a more comprehensive conversation going around that part? Because that's deeply concerning for me. And I'll put an asterisk next to that, because that's not for this committee. But as it pertains to public safety, I think that's a bigger conversation. So again, on on page four. So the 516 bike Laine enforcement resident request, I don't know what that looks like compared to what what's the sort of the baseline [1:32:38 PM] what's the sort of the baseline the standard. >> Yeah. So that's a that's a large amount. I mean so the customer service request for parking violation enforcement in general is very large. It's top, you know, I don't know, five or so within the city. I think last year we did about 15,000 total. So 516 is a pretty large number as far as I don't have the previous month's numbers, but they're very comparative. So you. >> Said last year you did how many total? I'm sorry. About 15,000, 15,000. >> 15,000. >> 15,000 customer requests for. >> Parking violations in general okay. From the public. >> But I meant for bike Laine and. >> I do not have that year total so I can get back to you on it. >> But that'd be great. Yeah, because I'd love to know what the baseline is. I don't know what 516 looks like compared to what you know. Is this a bumper year or, you know, is this low? I don't know what that means. >> It's pretty comparative to the previous months. We haven't seen it, but I don't have that number. >> Okay. Thank you. I'd like to see that. And then one of my other questions was, oh yeah, I already spoke to it. The hazards [1:33:38 PM] already spoke to it. The hazards for public travel and confrontations with enforcement staff, the question or the next bullet on on page five, misalignment between traditional parking enforcement strategies and modernized code. What what is the what's the thing that's making it so we're misbalanced. >> Yeah. So anytime we modernize any code or we add new technology like digital permitting or, you know, or park app, we have to have, you know, the tools in order to enforce those, you know, more efficiently. And when you have manual processes that typically we've had for old ways of doing things, it creates challenges. And here's an example. Parking enforcement. We have to talk tires. That's something you go around. You have this little chalk, you go chalk it and then you come back to it. If that chalk has not moved and you write a citation for being there for more than 15 or 30 minutes with newer technology, they call it chalking, where you're able to chalk that tire, that [1:34:39 PM] to chalk that tire, that vehicle, come back to it. If it's in the same spot, then you're able to write a citation. Those type of efficiencies create, you know, there are ability to enforce quicker and have more efficiencies within it without having to use other manual processes. So we have a lot of legacy ways of doing things with our modern code that prevents us to use our enforcement more effectively and across the city. So we spend more time doing certain things than. >> I completely understand. And I think in my experience, that's sort of how the city of Austin rolls. I see us emerging from the ice age slowly. That said, though, I do want to know how do we catch up? What's the what's the leap? You know, if there's this, you know, paradigm shift between the old and the new, what's the push? >> Yeah. So it's linking our current technologies to be able to meet that. So, you know, we have handheld devices that we currently are in contact with. And we're looking to sync that [1:35:41 PM] And we're looking to sync that to a better management system to understand better hotspots and get better reporting that we can do using vehicles, you know, to help us enforce more effectively. There's different type of technologies to do that. And I think that, you know, once we get some of those ways of enforcing more effectively a larger area than sending normal, you know, area, you know, we have 3 or 4 officers walking an area. You could have 1 to 2 officers effectively enforcing the same area with the newer technology. >> Yeah, I just keep coming back to that original concern around public safety. I want everybody to be safe, the general public and our staff. And so I agree to your assessment around limiting interaction, you know, removing the potential. I prefer removing the potential than, you know, deputizing private citizens or getting, you know, the I just realized the other day, the security company at the H-E-B that they have guns. I just I didn't realize that before, but like that we don't do we want to [1:36:42 PM] like that we don't do we want to elevate, you know, the status of our parking enforcement staff to where they're armed. And I just think you more guns means more guns stuff. And so but to council member vela's point, I, I do think there's some inefficiency and an efficacy to a mailing program that, you know, I'd like to see what the numbers look like, you know, because if we're getting all modern with our technology to make it so that we're more efficient, then why don't we modernize all of it? I just wonder if there's a better way. Thank you. Thank you chair, I appreciate it. >> I appreciate those questions. I know in the last budget cycle, we had earmarked a number of e-bikes to be able to let parking management officers utilize those. And we had gotten feedback that there were some folks that preferred to use the vehicles to be able to go and do their work, just because you never know when that confrontation is coming, and you want to make sure that our safety officers are able to do their job without being harassed by the public. So I appreciate that. I also want to make sure [1:37:42 PM] that. I also want to make sure we're enforcing our rules, but also not putting anyone in unneeded danger. I know council member Laine has some questions. >> I do also share the concern about mailboxes, and perhaps as you're looking into things, you'll find examples of perhaps companies vendors that are able to implement texting as well as mailing or something multiple ways. I also am very happy that you brought up your concerns around safety. I know that we have looked to civilian and staff enforcement of a variety of things across the city, and I think it's an important concern and noting it. Okay, so I have a couple questions. Are there how have you worked amnesty or forgiveness programs for residents that are experiencing hardship or unable to pay into your pilot proposal? >> So thankfully, we have municipal court partners who handle that side of the house. And so our focus is on the regulation of the curb itself, [1:38:43 PM] regulation of the curb itself, the enforcement of that curb. And then once it gets to the municipal court process, they've got their own programs and initiatives in place. And so that would be a question we'd probably have to defer over to municipal court partners. >> Something that caught my attention was the geographic expansion that this allows. There are a lot of moving parts, and so it's a little hard to understand what the revenue implications will be. And there certainly are potential harms. And so one, I think at some point in this process, as we are all going to end up weighing harms and benefits, it would be helpful to have some sort of range estimate information around the impact to the general fund and our operations, since that's a really important factor right now. Suggesting that and then also mentioning slash asking with the expansion of geographic area and, and where there are there are parts of our [1:39:44 PM] there are there are parts of our city and I know I have no idea how vast they are, where parking hasn't been enforced for an exceedingly long time. We've added a lot of new bike lanes. We've changed the laws on, you know, how we're handling that. I have personally observed places where for very long periods of time, there has been street parking in front of businesses that now the street parking is all a bike Laine, and there is no longer safe passage to where those cars would have to park in order to safely access that business or nonprofit or that sort of thing. And when that type of thing is coming up, where we have geographically expanded all in one burst to areas where we weren't reaching before, I have concerns. So I, I anticipate that if we ever get to the point that we're doing a pilot and an area that is very accustomed to enforcement and these issues have been thoroughly vetted, and then we in one step expand to the whole city. There are different issues that will arise. And so I hope that as you bring it back to us, [1:40:46 PM] that as you bring it back to us, I don't need it today because I know we got to stay on agenda. But as you bring it back to us, that that that planning is part of the rollout process. Thank you, thank you. >> Thank you. Is there any preliminary estimates of revenue that's been generated by the bike Laine enforcement and the increase in parking fines for cars, or is that coming soon? >> Yeah, that we can bring that back soon. We don't have those today. >> Okay. I didn't know if there were thresholds by which, you know, every quarter we'd get some information. They've been major adjustments. And so I want to be mindful that we just need to understand is this actually serving the purpose that we had set out to, or is it just inconveniencing the folks affected by it? >> We did a little bit of preliminary analysis when the code changes were happening just using prior year data. And so what we can do is update that information with what we've seen actually in the past few months, and be able to maybe tie that into the council budget q&a piece, because it will have some [1:41:46 PM] piece, because it will have some revenue implications for municipal court and general fund. So we'll probably go through that process if that works. >> I appreciate that. And I think that dovetails into what council member harper-madison asked, which is there's been 516 bike Laine enforcement requests. What does that mean year over year? How do we understand those? I also want to ask a question about camera enforcement. I know there's been some conversations. I know there's at least one, probably more than one business in town that that works on this. We just had a very lengthy and detailed discussion about license plate readers on our public safety officers vehicles, and where else they exist in town, because there's a lot of private entities that actually have alprs in use today, whether or not our officers are using them. Can you talk a bit about camera enforcement and what the city is investigating at this point, whether that would be an appropriate use or how to safeguard the concerns that were brought to us in June or may. Whenever we had that discussion. It was at least one of those last two council meetings. >> Sure. Yeah, we've certainly been following along watching what council's directive and position is on that. We know [1:42:48 PM] position is on that. We know that there are a variety of different types of technology options that are out there. And so, you know, mobile or fixed lpr, there's video based systems. That's what we want to kind of take as next steps as looking into what options are out there, and then start to understand how they're going to align with that. The resolutions that council has passed, giving that direction about data access, security, retention policies, making sure that anything that we try to move forward would be totally in alignment with what you all have laid out. So that's what we're looking at. And it's always going to be that balance of getting the efficiency while adhering to that direction that's been given, and being able to see that we're on that same path forward. So that's what the next steps really include is that technology analysis, evaluation, starting to see what these companies offer and what options we have moving forward. >> Okay. And have any companies reached out to the city proactively just to say, hey, I'm here or I'm doing business in other Texas cities, and we just want to make sure that, you know, what our technology does or doesn't do. Have they reached out? >> I had an email this morning. We get those emails frequently. [1:43:48 PM] We get those emails frequently. There's certainly companies based in Austin, but also national that have been reaching out interested. They saw what happened with the code changes in the spring. They saw the mailing of citations being a potential option. So we're constantly engaging with companies trying to see what they offer, seeing what the best, best in class products are on the market, and then seeing how that aligns with our city local policies. And that's what we're moving forward with. >> I appreciate hearing that. I know the discussion around where data is stored is something that a lot of people care about in not just Austin, but in Texas right now. And I really want to make sure that if we end up going that route, that we have all the safeguards in place to be able to say this information is not being shared, it seems like company to company. There may be different practices, but I really understand the general public being weary and not necessarily trusting that data collection is not being shared elsewhere. And so I know you're aware of some of the folks that do that work in Austin to make sure that data is not being collected and shared outside of our jurisdiction. And so I just want to make sure if those [1:44:50 PM] want to make sure if those conversations are happening, that that is something that y'all think about in these in these meetings to say, we can't let this information get to places that the Austin city council and the city at large definitely don't want to see. >> Absolutely. >> Let's see. Hi. Yes, madam Rogers, jump right in. >> Madam chair, I just wanted to follow up on on the last two questions that you had. Yes. There are absolutely companies here in Austin. They have been following all the proceedings that have been taking place, and they would love to do some type of pilot here. So just to let you know, is, is our team said we have companies right here in our city. On the other item that you talked about related to budget, I want to reiterate the importance of what they're doing from a standpoint of enforcement is really for compliance. And just as we heard from the vice [1:45:50 PM] just as we heard from the vice chair, that that's what they want to see, is if there is a situation that once a one ticket actually, or citation goes out, that that behavior change takes place. So I just wanted to reiterate the things that they're doing are really trying to drive the compliance, not the revenue piece. >> I appreciate that very much. Did you have another thought, council member? Vela. >> I just wanted to reiterate your comments around data privacy. I don't want to be a luddite and say, no, we're not going to, you know, turn to any. But if we do, we have to do it in a very careful and cautious way and be respectful of the data that we're collecting and making sure that we're keeping it confidential. So I just I appreciate your comments and I completely share your concerns. >> Yeah, I think that's a great point. And just understanding, you know, a lot of us are not data technicians and how easy it is to copy and paste things. We want to make sure that how is that working on the back end? [1:46:51 PM] that working on the back end? How can we make sure that the folks that are responsible to us and to the city at large are following those protocols, and how to make sure that even if folks mean the best that we're actually implementing in in the best way forward. >> I'm sorry. One more again. And I understand and recognize again similar public safety conversation going on. In addition to the transportation, there are efficiencies to be gained. There's no question about it across multiple areas. But we just have to go in eyes wide open, understanding what the situation is and make sure whatever systems that we design are very secure. >> Well, I appreciate the update. If there are no further questions from the committee, I think that wraps up that presentation. Thank you. >> Thank you. Councilmember. >> Thanks. Our next item, number three, will be an update on the operation of autonomous vehicles in the city and applicable regulations. >> I will try to. >> Welcome. [1:47:53 PM] >> Welcome. >> Committee members. Thank you again for the time today. It's been a little bit since we've been able to provide a full update on autonomous vehicle operations here in Austin. Quite a lot has changed in the past few months, and I think we're starting just to see the industry really emerge. They're very interested in Austin. They're very interested in seeing how operations are going to happen both now and moving forward. And we're starting to see rapid growth in the number of vehicles that are operating, not only in the early phases of testing, but also now deploying for commercial rides. So we're excited to give you this update. There's a number of different elements we're looking for to discussing with you. And we've got lieutenant white here with APD, who's part of our autonomous vehicle working group here at the city, and been a very strong kind of leader in this space from the public safety side of things. So Rachel castagnoli's going to be our [1:48:54 PM] castagnoli's going to be our subject matter expert providing the presentation. We look forward to discussion. >> Thanks. Next slide. And so just this morning we heard that waymo is expanding its deployment zone by almost double where currently was. This is very apropos. As you know under Texas law we can't local governments cannot regulate or permit autonomous vehicles. There was a law that was passed in the legislature. It will become effective September 1st, but the DMV anticipates actual enforcement not to begin until the spring. That will create a permitting system between the Texas DMV and the department of regulations that will av companies will have to submit an application, receive a permit for commercial use, and the DMV will then have the power to suspend, revoke or cancel those permits. Another part of that law, sb 2807, was to require a first responder plan for all commercial avs. That plan would include how to communicate with [1:49:54 PM] include how to communicate with support staff, how to safely move the vehicle from the road, and how to recognize that the av is an autonomous mode. This is a. These are all things that we've really advocated for during the ledge ourselves fire, police and ems as well. So we're really happy to see that in there. And the Texas DMV will be the owner of that process. Next slide. This is pretty much what happens that we've experienced in Austin with autonomous vehicles. We have a mapping phase where vehicles being driven, but it's got all the tech on it. It's pulling in the data. We have a testing phase that's usually there's a person in the vehicle, but it is moving around autonomously. A safety drivers typically present, they might not be. And then we have a deployment phase where the vehicles are accepting commercial passengers. Frequently we're seeing two of these phases occur simultaneously for a company. So as an example right now Tesla is deployed and they are still doing some testing on more roadways. Or someone might be [1:50:55 PM] roadways. Or someone might be mapping in one area, testing in another, deployed in a third. So but these are the three phases that avs go through here. Next slide. This is what you would currently see in Austin. And no law requires anyone to tell the dot or us how many vehicles they have. So we have worked with the av companies to get these numbers. They might not be completely accurate. We've got the waymo's that you all have seen here. There's at least 100 of those. We have probably 11 to 12 deployed robotaxis, but another hundred or so Teslas being tested. Volkswagen admit is testing 12. That zoox highlander. You see about 20 of those that are in testing mode. But the deployed vehicle will be that tealish vehicle. That vehicle doesn't have a steering wheel or human controlled brakes. That vehicle is deployed in Las Vegas right now, so we do anticipate those coming next [1:51:56 PM] anticipate those coming next year. And then av ride has about 12 Hyundai ioniq. Next slide. Like Lewis said, we have a safety working group. Thank you. And this group's been together been doing work since June of 2023 kind of when crews started. We can't regulate, but we do have an expectations document. In that expectations document, we expect trainings for our folks. We. We facilitate communications so that people can we can talk to the av companies with one voice, and we also collect the data and have our data. And we meet pretty regularly to go over where we're seeing increased incidents and what police, fire and ems are also seeing. I will say that the airport is now involved in that because avs are extremely interested in going to the airport. So this slide shows some of the data that we share with autonomous vehicle [1:52:56 PM] with autonomous vehicle companies. Our expectation is that avs can operate in the right of way without any data from the city of Austin. They should be able to recognize lights and sirens, to recognize a school zone sign, to recognize an emergency scene. However, because we support the safety of these deployments, we do share as much information as we have. A lot of this information is publicly available, and we're just merging it into a map for them. So we share where all our critical infrastructure is as well as special events. Since that seems to be a issue for some of you companies. We also share schools and school Zones for emergencies, and this only applies for fire and ems for large emergencies, or what they call high priority emergencies. Multiple engines are being dispatched. We send that right out of our computer aided dispatch system directly to the av company. Our expectation is an exclusion zone around that emergency scene of 1000ft for one hour. That aligns with San Francisco and Phoenix. We built [1:53:57 PM] Francisco and Phoenix. We built that process, the three of us together. And since those are three, the three biggest cities waymo are operating in, we hope that it makes it easier for them as well. And that bottom showing the email that they get with the lat long. Next slide, I'm going to let lieutenant white talk a little about the citations process. We can say avs, but it's a little complicated. >> So unfortunately like she said it's very cumbersome and complicated. We've only issued three to date since its inception in November. Because of the process essentially. So the citation as we know it were. An officer fills out a ticket and gives it to you when you sign it. It's a promise to appear. So because these are automated vehicles, you have no one to issue the citation to. So the process then becomes the officer has to go back, write a complaint like an affidavit explaining what happened, identifying the vehicle. And then from there he has to send [1:54:59 PM] then from there he has to send it to me. I have to then run the information about the vehicle through the secretary of state's website to see who's the registered agent in Texas, because that's who is ultimately going to be responsible for dealing with the citation. So we then complete the affidavit based on that information, send it back to the officer who signs it, and has to have it witnessed by a second officer. And then from there, it's emailed to the municipal court, and they handle it from that point. So as you can imagine, it's a lot more of a process, and most officers just aren't going to be willing to deal with it like they normally would just by issuing a citation at the time of the process. >> So far as I know, we are the only city in America that does issue citations to avs. But other cities have called us and asked about our process. It's really state court or state specific. So we also can and do issue parking violations to autonomous vehicles. A parking citation is against a we just talked about a car. So we are [1:56:00 PM] talked about a car. So we are able to do that. And that is also through email. Next slide. This is our public dashboard. It's available on our website. The last time we were here y'all asked for us to make this available. It is, I believe, the most visited dashboard at uw. And we are constantly getting feedback from our residents, as well as police and fire about where they're seeing things. Issues with avs. We don't do any validation or verification of those claims. We put them right in here. We categorize them. What we're using this for is to tell us where and when we're having issues, so that we can work with the av companies to figure out how to solve them. So we know we have a lot of issues around the moody center, and there are infrastructure reasons for that. And there are, you know, cones and there are police doing hand signals, and there's just a lot going on around there that regular drivers struggle with as well during events. So we are always working with our [1:57:02 PM] we are always working with our av partners to work on that area, as well as Barton springs between Lamar and south first. That's another area we see things and it's just, you know, you've got the barbecue, you have the palmer center. So those are two places we've really seen things emerge previously in 2023. The vehicles that were here struggled with lights and sirens. Increasingly. That has somewhat been resolved. The vehicles we're seeing today are really struggling with police hand signals. That's probably our one of our most common issues. So either ignoring them or, you know, reacting not the way the officers asking. So that's what we're working pretty frequently with both a both deployed av companies on on solving for side. So I just talked a little about how we're using that data. We are really focused on the geographic aspects of it. You know, is our infrastructure good here? Is this a place where human drivers are struggling so we can pull [1:58:02 PM] are struggling so we can pull our vision zero and our crash data and see if we're seeing overlap between the autonomous driver and a human driver. And we can and have made appropriate infrastructure improvements like restriping outside fire stations to help both avs and drivers understand how they're supposed to be reacting. We share all of the data that backs this dashboard up with txdot, as well as nhtsa, the national highway transportation safety association, who regulates autonomous vehicles. We also share all with the av companies so that they can do continuous improvement on their models. Next slide. We do a lot of collaboration, which is really good and fun. We find that aid, university of Texas and capmetro are really big stakeholders on what's happening in the right of way. So we work with them to share procedures, talk about what to expect, how to stop the vehicle if they need to, how to reach out to us. We also do an annual av stakeholder meeting in [1:59:04 PM] annual av stakeholder meeting in petting zoo. You can see it there where people get to come in and see the vehicles and also hear from us about what we're doing and how we're moving forward with making them safer. We work with our state and federal partners a lot. We are constantly in contact with fhwa and nhtsa about whatever their needs are so that they can do federal regulations. But we're also Louis sits on the Texas connected autonomous vehicle task force, which is kind of setting the state policy. And then we do participate in the society of automotive engineers on their on road automation to give feedback because they're writing the best practices. So we're trying as much as we can to bring our experience and our needs, especially the needs of fire, police and ems, to all the places we can so that autonomous vehicle deployments become safer and safer in Austin and everywhere. Next slide. And [2:00:04 PM] everywhere. Next slide. And that's it. I think we're happy to take any questions. >> All right I'll open it up to questions from the committee members. Let's start with council member harper-madison. I know you had mentioned this at a previous meeting. Just noticing how they're operating in in your district and had some concerns about it. >> Yeah. And honestly, today I don't have any. I will say I'm a gardener. So I'm outside a lot with my back to the street. And I know what it sounds like and that is creepy. I know when they're coming. That said, though, my concern was listening to you talk about the multi-tiered process by which we enforce. And it sounds to me like that's it's sometimes, you know, we have these processes where it has to touch nine sets of hands. I'm like, that's three hours per employee with $33 an hour. How much did it cost us to get 12 bucks or, you know, whatever the thing is comparatively. So like the cost benefit analysis thing, I mean, what's it the whole concept of like diminishing returns? It sounds like the juice ain't worth the squeeze there. In [2:01:06 PM] worth the squeeze there. In which case if it's if it's a public safety concern, you know, just not doing it is not an option. In which case, it sounds like the next best thing would have to be to have these companies incur that cost. We can't incur that cost for them to be in compliance with our traffic regulations, in which case it sounds again like the conversation is bigger. I don't nobody else gets to operate, you know, without accountability on our roads. So I guess the question is how do we initiate that bigger conversation and who's the we not it. >> That that's actually something that we brought up to the state with regard to legislative efforts. And I know part of the conversation we're going to be having is with the dps regarding this bill. We've had some suggestions about maybe the state should implement a process by which officers can write a citation directly to the company, be it that, you know, they leave the copy of the [2:02:06 PM] they leave the copy of the citation in the vehicle or they're able to email it. However, the case is where it can make that process. Like you said, I've heard that a lot, with the juice being worth the squeeze of them having to go through this whole process just to cite the av, when they've got so many public safety issues they've got to deal with as it is. So that's where we've started the conversation. As a matter of fact, they're meeting at the end of the month with dps, one of my corporals in the special events office, and that's part of what the discussion is going to be about, is a citation process that hopefully will be some kind of state type of process. >> Interesting. So, you know, something that came to mind, I, I was forced to get a new iPhone 16. Listen, I was not a willing participant in the process. They don't carry my phone anymore. And so as I was setting it up, it said the thing about how I can make it so that law enforcement can open my phone, you have like a bypass code or something. And so it seems to me, you know, when you get one of the alien cars, you press the button to unlock the car. And [2:03:07 PM] button to unlock the car. And that's seems like you guys should be able to have a bypass code. Just clicked it. Open the door. Toss that puppy in there. You know, maybe a designated spot for it. You know, this is the spot where at the end of the day, when you clean out the car with potential citations would be or whatever. >> Yeah. That was that was one of the suggestions I had made was we they will already let us get access because we'll have to communicate with them through a two way radio. And you could even explain I'm stopping it because of X, Y, Z. I'm issued a citation, and I'm placing the citation in the glove compartment of the vehicle. Yeah. >> Well, I'm I'm interested to see how that evolves. That's an interesting conversation. One of the other questions I had was this whole, like the one hour emergency zone clearance. I'm curious to know if the car's already within the zone. Does it disable the car, or does it allow it to leave the zone and then not reenter. So we can't set up geofences only the autonomous vehicle companies, right? >> That's what I'm saying. So what's the protocol for them? [2:04:09 PM] what's the protocol for them? >> They usually allow it. So they're getting it at exactly the same time that it's coming in essentially to the 911. So they're getting it before usually emergency responses on scene. So they're able to leave the zone okay. And yeah this is to prevent we saw a lot of issues in San Francisco. And so they really were the leaders on like this is what we need. And we implemented it before we had too many issues here. >> Excellent. Thank you for that I appreciate it. And I have one other question. And it was. About the lights and sirens and hand signals. And I'm just wondering, does the company sound as though these are fixes that are coming soon or I mean, again, what's the regulation there? Any other driver would be expected to follow traffic laws that traffic commands that were provided by member law enforcement. And if they can't comply, then I don't understand how we I mean, if you're not in compliance, you're not in [2:05:11 PM] compliance, you're not in compliance. >> Yeah. And so we've had Rachel can attest to numerous conversations with him about that particular problem. We often get the same answers that we're working on it. And we still occasionally will see that issue. I don't know that they've never given us a time frame that it will be, you know, ever corrected, so to speak. I can't even say that we've necessarily seen improvement in it. So what what often happens is when it freezes up because it's either not obeying the traffic signals that the officer is giving. The officer has to make contact with the company through the either the phone or through the two way communication in the vehicle. And then the officer has to physically move it somewhere to get it out of the way, so that whatever the process is can continue. And it usually happens during special events downtown. It just the vehicle freezes up. It can't figure out which way to go and doesn't understand what the officer is trying to get it to do. And they they have [2:06:12 PM] to do. And they they have claimed to be working at it on it. But at this point, we haven't seen the evidence that indicates that they've corrected the issue. >> Interesting. It seems like they have a lot of autonomy in making the decisions about how to operate on our roads. >> Yeah. And I'll just add to, if I could, the, you know, the process that's laid out within the state, legislation that did pass is allowing for that kind of permitting process for the DMV to have that ownership over that. We've met with them and they've said, you know, if you are continuously seeing issues, we want to know about that. And that might influence their ability to provide that permit or operation, operational ability for that company in the future. So that is the kind of only path available to us at this point. Without further state legislative changes or some other, you know, piece of those rules, processes being more explicit about it. >> Interesting. Thank you. Appreciate the presentation. Thank you. >> Chair. >> Thank you. Other questions from the committee. Let's go to vice chair qadri. >> Thank you. So our office was actually supposed to have a meeting with Tesla and we never showed up. So I have a question. Maybe you guys have more context [2:07:13 PM] Maybe you guys have more context than I do because I have none. Did Tesla actually ever do any testing on the roads here in Austin? >> Yes, they've been testing on the roads. >> Yeah. Okay, great. And then do you know how the exclusion zone applies for special events I.e. Acl south by when it comes to this. >> We cannot exclude autonomous vehicles from any place that we cannot exclude regular vehicles. We do meet very frequently. We met yesterday with some av companies to talk about the mls all-star game in Q2. Now that both deployments are up in that area, and we will have a big meeting every year for all our av companies to talk about acl, f1, move in weekend UT football as much as possible. We try to bring the av companies physically to the moody center and walk around it with Austin police to talk about our expectations, but we still have a lot of moody center issues. So yeah, we cannot limit them from any. We would allow a regular vehicle. >> Is there a way to just kind [2:08:13 PM] >> Is there a way to just kind of work with them on making sure you're talking about the all star game that's happening next week, and then, you know, acl is going to be here before we know it. South by, you know, drop off Zones on where folks should be being dropped off or not I mean we've there was a I think there's a video online. Someone was being stopped on an on an on ramp and let someone out. There was a staffer in our office who wrote it once and just stopped in front of city hall on Cesar Chavez. That's not somewhere where you should stop. So is there is there a conversations happening around that? >> Yeah, we've been able when we get feedback from people, we're able to reach out to the av company and find kind of specific areas, and they can geofence from letting out in that place. We have talked to them about pickup drop off opportunities. They assure us that like any rideshare, they can do it where any rideshare does and that they're acting the same way in Uber and Lyft would. But we'll continue to have that conversation with them, especially around acl areas that [2:09:13 PM] especially around acl areas that would be appropriate and not appropriate for them. We're really I mean, the real concern is that they'll block like necessary emergency vehicles. So we're really trying to work out areas where they can't go to make sure that we're keeping those lanes open, and we'll have to make those areas where no, no vehicles can go. >> And then my last question on the nifty map, I don't know what page it's on, but the little the little, the little nifty the map that I think everyone was excited to see and look at. There's spikes on the on the incident chart. I mean, one is October 2024. I would think, you know it's wren's acl. Happens. One it looks like it's March of 25. Are these because of festivals? Is it because there's more cars on the ground? >> The October 2024 one is about the Georgia Texas game. >> I suspect. >> That's right. And the March 1st is also related to south by southwest. So yes, it is. We can't always predict where we're going, where APD is planning on [2:10:14 PM] going, where APD is planning on shutting down roads. So we really struggle with I think that, you know, they do better when they have the information in advance. And as much as possible, we give them information in advance. But events as large as south by road closures are happening kind of as needed. And it's hard to communicate with them during during the event about it. >> Great. Thank you. >> Go ahead. >> Crashes involving av vehicles. How is how many you know what are we seeing. What are y'all seeing on in terms of crashes. >> Sure. I think in Austin we've had about 64 reported crashes. Those are crashes reported to the national highway transportation safety association. Who does monitor all av crashes under the new administration? The rules around sharing that data have changed. So we do anticipate seeing fewer crashes. We have crashes. Sometimes we find out about them [2:11:15 PM] Sometimes we find out about them through the media. Sometimes a police report is filed. Sometimes autonomous vehicle company calls us. We're obviously very concerned about collisions. Many of the collisions are being hit from behind because they tend to come to a full stop at a stop sign. Maybe other people don't expect that, but they also, you know, will stop in traffic if they see someone entering the road. So they do. We do have those kind of collisions, and we are talking to them about what they're doing to make sure that they're not being followed too closely. And also they're making it clear that they're going to stop. But yesterday, we yesterday, police told us that there was lots of rear end collisions in Austin. So it might not be. They might just be acting like regular drivers. >> Very interesting. And kind of a bigger question, but how? And again, I don't even know if we're there to be able to make the comparison. But how do they [2:12:17 PM] the comparison. But how do they compare to a regular drivers, you know, who are notoriously bad? Yeah, it definitely depends on the driver. But I mean, that's a whole debate, right? I mean, autonomous vehicles. Human drivers make many errors and are very dangerous, can be very dangerous. Any initial thoughts perceptions on the safety of avs versus safety of human drivers. >> Yeah. Conceptually it makes sense. Right. They've got some of them have over 20 cameras on the car and they've got vision everywhere. And they can see farther than any one human driver could see in more places at once. I think the benefit we've seen so far is that the speed has typically been at the speed limit. And wouldn't we see severe crashes and fatality crashes? Usually speed is a primary factor. And so staying at that speed limit that's been, you know, set because of engineering analysis and judgment and our policy goals, being able to see that in place has really helped on the [2:13:19 PM] has really helped on the severity of crashes. As far as frequency, there's been some studies, some analysis done. I've seen one from the company themselves. I don't think we've seen a full academic level, rigorous analysis over time. And so to get that full comparison and really understand, are we saying, you know, out of the million vehicle miles traveled, how many crashes have happened? Are we looking at severity of crashes? There are a lot of factors to make that kind of determination. Is it safer? Is just a really hard one to define right now. I think over time, with more miles traveled, more actual ridership in real situations on the roadways. I think we'll see that play out over time and have that analysis done. >> The fascinating. We're in the epicenter of a fascinating global experiment here, and I appreciate y'all's work. And honestly, the speed limit issue is a really important point because we know question speed kills. And when we see deaths and I've got a handful of [2:14:20 PM] and I've got a handful of roadways that are very dangerous. And that's exactly the problem, is that people are going way over the speed limit and turns what should be a fender bender into a much more serious accident. So thank you. >> Absolutely. I have a question about the technology. So it's my understanding that some of the autonomous vehicles that are currently deployed in Austin work more off of sensors, and the robotaxis may work more on cameras. Is that true? And can you tell me a bit more about what does that mean for operating a vehicle that is working off of software or some other sort of remote management? >> Sure. I'm sure that Tesla can answer the questions about their camera only system. They have spoken to us about it many times. It's more trained on how a driver actually would drive, and they have a neural network and a lot of data from private Tesla owners that they're working off of. So they do only have camera, a camera based system. They are there are Teslas going around that have [2:15:23 PM] Teslas going around that have lidar on them, that are doing some amount of, of mapping. So all into that system, the waymo's and others have have the whole sensor suite with lidar and the radar. They're doing more of a software based driving. So both companies have told us that it works and it's safe. So, you know, we are kind of waiting to see how it plays out like everyone else. But we have the same expectations for both technologies. >> I've heard mixed reviews from both sides. I hear some folks that are saying the sensor and lidar is better. I've heard others saying the camera is better. I will just say, as someone who does drive an Austin, Teslas can go fast quickly. I think that's one of the perks that they advertised when they first deployed was, you know, 0 to 60. In however many seconds. My car doesn't accelerate that fast, and it's kind of why I like it. I don't need to go that fast when I'm when I'm driving. And so I'm really mindful of what kind of maneuvers, for lack of a better [2:16:23 PM] maneuvers, for lack of a better term, that some of the cars can handle. And what are the expectations if you're a pedestrian or you're a parent pushing a stroller, or you're someone utilizing a wheelchair to get around a congested area, how do these technologies play in? Have there been any updates on. I know there was one video that went around a couple of weeks ago about the use of some of the new technology and school busses. Can it read the stop signs that school busses deploy to make sure that kids can get off and get across the street safely? Or are you seeing any changes or nuance in that video that wasn't presented? Who wants to take that one? >> Yeah. >> So we do expect all vehicles to read the stop sign at the bus. We are currently doing a project with aid to prepare for the new school year, with multiple deployments to make sure our crossing guards who are dpw employees are ready for it and things like that. So obviously, we're extremely concerned about school busses [2:17:24 PM] concerned about school busses and children. We have. What we found this past year is that pick up, drop off rules are often unwritten. Like every parents know what pick up, drop off. It's only one way at this time. But you know, an autonomous vehicle can't recognize that. So we are trying to document that and send it out to really keep that, especially that pickup drop off time. Really kind of a bubble. That's the request that we're making. Again, we don't have any regulatory power, but and we also know that nhtsa is doing its own work on its side to review the safety of these vehicles, and we are providing them with any information and videos that they need to do their review. But they're the automotive engineers, so we'll let them come to a conclusion. >> Thanks for that answer. And I know that cap metro busses, they try to schedule their stops so that the pedestrians, when they're getting off, are going behind the vehicle and more visible to oncoming traffic as opposed to going in front of the bus that is stopped. And [2:18:24 PM] bus that is stopped. And sometimes drivers going past may not see that there's a pedestrian there until the last second. So I think that's something that we need to be mindful of as there are new technologies here on the line of our ability to regulate things. Can you give us any updates on where the DMV is at when we can expect? You know, September 1st is when new laws go into effect. I appreciate seeing that the state cares about this and want to want to make sure that all of the vehicles that are on our roads are following safety standards, you know, but with municipalities not being able to actually regulate what what is happening within our own city boundaries, you know, the same formula may not work for San Antonio, Austin, Dallas, Houston or El Paso, where you're going to see some of these technologies deployed. Do we have any idea of what the recommendations will be from the DMV, or if dps is providing input to them, to help make sure that our public safety officers can tell these vehicles how to behave safely? >> Yeah. So the you're correct. [2:19:25 PM] >> Yeah. So the you're correct. The legislation typically is in effect September 1st with this being a rules process being developed. They have posted some draft rules as of last Thursday I believe. So there's draft rules that they presented to the board for the DMV. And they've got a process and timeline for that. Their goal is what they've told us is definitely by December 1st, probably sooner that those rules would be in place. The state legislation is clear that it's 90 days from when the rules are finalized to when they would be impactful or effective as far as enforcement of those rules. So that would be a 90 day window starting around December 1st, if not earlier, to where the companies could provide that documentation information as required by the rules. And then generally around March, when we actually see that be effective for enforcement purposes or for reporting purposes and everything else. >> Okay. >> I, I heard a bit of a mention about special events in Austin, and I just want to make sure do we have the appropriate staffing, whether that's in smart mobility or through [2:20:25 PM] smart mobility or through special events with APD to make sure that we're not down some positions or have vacancies for these events where we have seen some of these technologies go awry and start blocking intersections and not following the directions of our public safety officers. >> So I haven't been made aware of anything shortage wise that because of the avs, it's just the evidence that we've talked about where they they cause problems just for the officers already there on the scene. A good example like she was talking about happened during south by southwest, where officers needed to make an adjustment to traffic flow. Even so, even though the avs had been given the zone to where to stay out of because they had to make a change to the traffic flow. Now, the av didn't realize and didn't know what to do. Froze up, caused a traffic jam, and then the officers have to go through the process of contacting someone to be able to pull the vehicle off the road and all those kinds of things. So from what we're seeing, it's [2:21:25 PM] So from what we're seeing, it's not necessarily that we have a shortage of staff. It's just those incidents that that drain the resources because of the a good a good thing. Like you guys were talking about the safety of the vehicles. Anecdotally, from what we've seen in Austin, they do appear to be safer than a human driver. They're not drinking, they're not distracted. They're not eating while they're driving. We're not seeing them plowing into people left and right or anything like that, but they lack the social awareness of like, hey, the officer wants me to go left. I don't recognize what's happening in front of me, so I'm just going to freeze up and sit here. And so that's the biggest issue we're seeing right now. >> And our autonomous vehicles. I mean, I know there's a traffic plan when there's a major event that goes, you know, APD assesses how do we work with this traffic plan. The vehicles can follow that as long as they're not changed at the last minute. >> For the most part. Yeah. We can show them what roads are going to be shut down so that they know the vehicle. And the issue in this particular case is the vehicles aren't supposed to go on to the interstate. That was by program programing from waymo itself. In this case, the officers redirected traffic onto [2:22:26 PM] officers redirected traffic onto the interstate to clear out the downtown area. And so the waymo froze up because they didn't know what to do, because it's not allowed to get onto the freeway. >> Yeah. >> It hit a robot wall. >> So to speak. >> It just said, well, I can't go this way and I can't go that way. >> And I'll mention to from tpw perspective, I want to give Rachel a ton of credit. Kristen on our team. Christina. They have done a great job setting up the model that other cities are now looking to us as far as how we engage with and coordinate and communicate with these companies, even if we don't have the regulatory power, being able to provide that information upfront, I think has avoided a lot of issues, even though it's not quite perfect and not quite where we need it to be yet, but it has alleviated a lot of things on the front end with that planning and really great framework that they've set up. So I want to give them credit for that. >> And similar question. The smart mobility office has the staff that it needs right now to be able to do the work that's ahead of us. You know, it's really big having this many companies trying to do avs at the same time. >> Yeah. And as we've seen in the proposed budget, there's [2:23:27 PM] the proposed budget, there's been a shift as far as the structure of smart mobility not continuing on in its in its structure. Rachel will be continuing on as the lead subject matter expert with the av work that needs to happen moving forward. And I think we'll be reassessing over time as we scale up. Do we have the model and framework in place to where our partners and special events and APD and fire and ems, can they continue that model and move that forward, or will there need to be additional kind of tpw staff directly engaged with that? I think what they've created so far is really given us the structure and the baseline to move forward effectively with that for now, and we'll reassess over time. >> Okay, I appreciate that. I know there's a lot of departments kind of looking at how to do their strategic programing and look at their org charts. But this, you know, special events and autonomous vehicles is something that I really think we need to be focusing on right now. I think we need to allocate our resources because I think that the risks far outweigh any benefit of cost saving. If we end up with one person severely injured or worse, that's not going to be acceptable to me. And I really want to make sure that you and your programs have [2:24:27 PM] that you and your programs have what they need to, to do the work. Well. >> I appreciate that. It's almost, you know, coming from a vision zero background, there's a vision zero team, but vision zero is really incumbent upon everybody to move that forward as a mindset and how we approach something. I think it's similar in this way where it's a special events office, and they've got a dedicated team of staff that work with the event coordinators. We've got APD and other public safety partners engaged too, so it wouldn't be just a tpw team doing that. It's going to take a lot of different folks working on it continuously over time. >> Okay, I appreciate that. And I know we just kicked off the budget presentation on Tuesday, so I just want to flag that I'm going to play close attention to that. I just wanted to flag. Also with the conversation around airport rides, I know that for me, I think there is going to be a great opportunity to make sure folks can get from the airport to the convention center. I think it's upon every city to make sure that folks that are landing here at our airport or any other city's airport can get where they need to be very quickly in conversations with the airport because they're undergoing an expansion. They said, please don't map this current layout [2:25:28 PM] don't map this current layout because there's going to be issues as soon as we start realigning roads and changing where building exits and entrances are, where the arrivals and departures, you know how those operate. They know that it's out there. They're working collaboratively with the companies that want to operate in that space, but just said, you know, we've got to get through our expansion and our planning to be able to make sure that the vehicles are mapping once and doing it well. So that's definitely a conversation. I think autonomous vehicles could be a great test pilot for the airport to downtown conversation. Let me see. >> If I have anyone. >> I think that does it for those questions. Any last ones on autonomous vehicles before we move on to future items? Let's go with council member Laine. >> The most important thing that I have to say here is thank you so much for the work you've done. You have your had your hands full with very limited options. So thank you. I have two quick questions as I'm wondering if the issue of operating under adverse [2:26:29 PM] operating under adverse conditions and maybe some limitations around that, whether that might be rain that's impacted visibility or, you know, we just saw some safety data about pedestrians and how many more pedestrians are injured by cars at night, or where there's poor lighting or when there's fog. Or is that in the mix of the discussions that people have been working on? >> Yeah, on. And I think there was a photo of it in the powerpoint on may 28th when we had some storms. We had some issues with an autonomous vehicle getting caught in some flooding at rosewood and Chacon. So we have since then engaged in a lot of conversations. We've really been pushing since last year. But again, atx floods for monitoring roadways that are closed and things like that. I will say that that we believe that having someone local makes a really big difference. So on the third and 4th of July, when we were working with av companies to talk about flash flooding and talk about what we [2:27:31 PM] flooding and talk about what we needed from them, you know, like talking to people in Austin versus talking to people outside of Austin. There was a big difference in, in, you know, what they were perceiving as, as our issues. So, you know, we have communicated with our av companies that we'd like to have someone local that helps us to go on site and look at things together, but also really helps us during those severe weather. The eoc does have the phone numbers for all of these folks. During kind of large scale expected protests. They did pull out of downtown. So we are trying to make sure everyone has everyone's contact so that we can ask them to pull back. We can't make them, but we can ask them to pull back when we. We need everyone off the roads during during emergencies. >> Do you have a feel for when zoox and any other operators might be likely to actually enter Boston market? >> Sure. So zoox has told us as of Tuesday that they will likely be operating their custom built, their purpose built vehicle in [2:28:32 PM] their purpose built vehicle in 2026. There was some there hasn't been clarity at the federal level about those vehicles because they don't meet federal motor vehicle safety standards, they don't have steering wheels. And so there was a lack of clarity on that. But new rulemaking has come out in the federal dot to make those vehicles production, you know, faster and get them on the streets. So we do anticipate that zoox vehicle to come out soon. And we are in contact with Las Vegas all the time to see what their experience is there with it, and any learnings we can take about the vehicle. They will do a lot of training with our first responders to make sure that we can access it and move it when we need to. >> Thank you again. >> I think that does it for the presentation. >> Thank you. >> We appreciate you being here. The next item is just listed as previously distributed memos to mayor and council. I think this one is not necessarily back up yet, but will be posted shortly. [2:29:33 PM] yet, but will be posted shortly. So we're not posted to take any questions on it unfortunately today, but just wanted to read through quickly. The 2026 bond is going through public information, wanting to make sure they collect as much data as possible from what people would like to see to be put into that process. For the bond advisory task force. New city parking code enforcement now in effect, which we just got a lot of good information about, safe routes to schools celebrates completion. Anderson mill and purple sage projects. So good to see that for our schools, residents are encouraged to help shape Austin's citywide lighting plan. That's going to be a fascinating topic, and I'm very appreciative that the city is trying to work toward, you know, what is a comprehensive plan look like for lighting, for safety reasons and for transportation reasons? And then transportation demand management program has a new strategic plan opening new doors, enhancing the international travel experience at aws with project finished ahead of schedule. So we've got some great things happening at [2:30:34 PM] some great things happening at the airport. Barbara Jordan legacy is being honored. So there's some great information there about the atrium infill project and journey with aws mascot Ami. The armadillo surprises passengers. I didn't get an armadillo, so I don't know where those are. Maybe I need to go to the airport to find one. I know they also had a great collaboration project that regarded tortillas, so if anybody is a big fan of tortillas, I think they were giving some away for free for a day or two at the airport. Maybe the next time I'm there there will be some extra tortillas and maybe a stuffed armadillo or something if I'm lucky. Other than that, we've got identifying items to discuss at future meetings. So August 21st is one that we had flagged as an only if we need to have it meeting. It's going to be just a couple of days after we approve our budget as a city council. So we are right now planning on canceling that meeting, but want to just make sure it's flagged as if there happens to be one topic that is super time sensitive and has to be [2:31:35 PM] sensitive and has to be addressed, then we'll do one. Otherwise, we're going to try to clear people's schedules and give them a chance to, you know, pick up where they left off on other projects and manage our committee meeting schedules otherwise. So we'll plan on not doing one on August 21st unless we absolutely need to cover one topic. September might be asmp six year status report. The right of way, green infrastructure and potentially street fruit trees requests so we can understand better about better use of right of way with green spaces and heat island effect. Safe routes to school programing October might be cap metro transit plan 2035, city leap update, traffic enforcement update and pedestrian safety. November would be a street impact fee study update. State of Austin bridges and a city roadway conditions update. And then we have a whole list of about ten other topics for future that just have not been scheduled through the end of this year. But if something pops up, we'll definitely try to squeeze it in. Were there any [2:32:35 PM] squeeze it in. Were there any other topics that needed to be addressed at this point? You can always email us to. >> The only one I would love to project connect atp. You know, just kind of where are we? What's going on? It would be great to again, not a time sensitive. I know we're still in the midst of a long process, but it would be great to get them in, to just kind of hear from them as to where we are and where we're going. >> Absolutely. I think that's a fantastic topic for us to get up to date on. And obviously there's other sorts of construction management program things going on I-35, I know we'll talk a little bit more about caps and stitches as we move into late 2026, when we need to be committing our next decisions. So there's a number of good things happening in transportation, but if there's no further things to address at this point in time, I will call this meeting adjourned at 2:33 P.M.