Mobility Committee (MOBC) Meeting Transcript – 11/13/2025 Title: ATXN-1 (24hr) Channel: 1 - ATXN-1 Recorded On: 11/13/2025 6:00:00AM Original Air Date: 11/13/2025 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. [1:05:40 PM] is everybody ready? I think we're ready to go. Good afternoon everyone. This is the mobility committee. I am the chair of Paige Ellis, and it is 1:05 P.M. And we are conducting this meeting in Austin city hall chambers. I'm joined by vice chair qadri and council member Laine, council member vela. And I believe council member harper-madison should be joining us shortly via the remote access. I believe we have three people who signed up for public communication. Can you go ahead and call their names? >> Yes. Can I please have Marty combs, Kate Hainsworth and Adam Greenfield? >> And I believe we have three minutes per speaker. Go right ahead. Make sure the microphone is on. Why don't you hit that button until it turns green? >> There we go. There we go. Okay. Yes. Perfect. Thank you. Welcome. Thank you. I would [1:06:42 PM] like to voice my support for a single bike Laine on sixth street between I-35 and congress, which is called an alternative design. Number two. Alternative design number two lets businesses on sixth street go from having zero space to 9.5ft of extra space for tables, chairs, patrons and customers. I can understand why businesses favor alternative design. Number three, that lets them go from zero space to 12ft. They want as much space as possible for patrons and customers. However, an alternative design two they still go from zero to 9.5ft is still pretty substantial. Increase the difference between the two alternatives two and three is 30in, barely wider than a closet door in design. Two patrons choosing to arrive by bike or small electric scooter will use the bike Laine instead of going down the sidewalk or using the vehicle Laine. Pedestrians on the sidewalk will be safer. The bicyclist and commuters and electric scooters will be safer. [1:07:43 PM] Everyone gets their own Laine. We all know the reality when provided of a vague path for travel. Some cyclist or person on electric scooter will make that random decision. They will either use a sidewalk endangering the bar and restaurant patrons, or they will traverse in a vehicle Laine, potentially off a driver. Road rage is a real thing in high traffic congestion. Some incidents may cost the city of Austin more money, as ems or police may be involved. Alternative design two provides one small bike Laine less than a half mile long .0.45 to be exact, one small bike Laine, one big benefit. Thank you for your consideration. >> Thank you. I appreciate those comments. >> Yeah, Adam. Okay. >> Good afternoon. Council members Adam Greenfield here with safe streets. Austin. Welcome back, councilmember qadri, wherever you are. So we [1:08:45 PM] are here to speak strongly in support of protected bike lanes on sixth street. Staff is currently working on proposals for the future of sixth street. Those plans must include protected bike lanes. It is official city policy. It's in the bike plan. Sixth street has unique connectivity. So some people say, well, why not have bike lanes on fifth or seventh or sixth street is the only westbound street that goes from I-35 to mopac, so it has unique connectivity value for cycling. Our mode shift goals very much depend on protected bike lanes on our high profile streets like sixth street, we know merchants. Some merchants have concerns about bike lanes, and we want to see the city really work with the business community to make these these bike lanes work. But the data are very clear. Bike lanes mean business. Businesses that are close to bike lanes do better than businesses that are not. This will be one of the most [1:09:46 PM] famous bike lanes, not only in Austin but in Texas. When you see photos of bike infrastructure in Texas that will be shown across the country. If we have bike lanes on sixth, they will be seen in those presentations. Conferences coming to town will use these facilities. They will become really a an example of of how serious Austin is about biking and really the future of sixth street and the future of bike lanes on sixth street is a litmus test for biking in Austin. How serious are we about our mode shift goals? How serious are we about safety? How serious are we about listening to all stakeholders and making sure that sixth street can be accessed safely by all transportation users? So thank you very much for the time. We really hope that that council will support staff in implementing our own plans for bike lanes on sixth street. Thank you very much. >> Thank you. We appreciate [1:10:47 PM] your remarks. Do we have a third speaker? Are they not here yet? >> She's not here. She did email me and let me know she'd be here around 130 if she can still speak. >> Okay. Yes. I will give her time to speak when she arrives. Let's go ahead and start with the other items that we have to tackle today. And just flag me when she arrives and we'll give her a spot in between presentations. >> Perfect. Thank you. >> All right. Item number one is approve the minutes of the October 16th mobility committee meeting. Do I have a motion from council member Laine, seconded by council member vela? I wanted to ask a question about the meeting dates for 2026. Or is that something that we could have added into backup? Or should I create space so we can read those into the record? >> Give me one second. >> Let me get a dangerous mode. [1:11:57 PM] >> I need a few minutes to pull up the the proposed dates. >> Perfect. Let's go ahead and move to the first presentation and then we'll circle back on that. Since it's been motioned and seconded, we will just leave that on the table for a second. Oh you're fine minutes. Good afternoon. This is a briefing update from the Austin police department on traffic enforcement. So we have a great presentation. We know that the police department has been doing great things, trying to make sure they're covering traffic enforcement and other safety issues on the roads. And we wanted to create a space to be able to learn more about the initiatives. >> Absolutely. Thank you for having me. Assistant chief Mike chancellor with Austin police department. I was asked to present on our traffic enforcement efforts and initiatives. First, I want to thank Ashley Avants with our executive staff for helping put together the presentation. [1:12:59 PM] There we go. So two things that kind of we look at when we're doing traffic enforcement to guide it. And the first one is our mission statement, which is about keeping our community safe. And then the second is vision zero. You're all familiar with vision zero. This is the 10th year we've been a part of vision zero. And even though our traffic numbers have dropped, you'll see substantially that within Austin, where we started middle of the road compared to other Texas cities, ten years in division zero, we're now the lowest per capita for serious injury and fatality rates among the largest cities in Texas. So there's two parts to the way we run a traffic initiative or have enforcement. The first part is education. We always want to make sure that people are educated on the issues that people are facing and where we're having collisions, what's causing collisions and things like that. So you'll see a lot of social media that we push out, usually at least once a week, you'll see something put out about speeding, seatbelts, drunk driving, things like that. [1:14:00 PM] And so that's the first part. We always want to educate people before we take any type of enforcement action. Here. You've got a slide for the traffic citations that we've written this year or the top ones. We typically always target aggressive driving first speeding, running red lights, running stop signs, things like that. But as you'll see, our most commonly issued citations are driving without insurance and driving with driver's license. Those are things that once we stop a vehicle, we end up finding that someone doesn't have the either of those, and so they end up getting a citation for those. On this next slide, you'll see that we're up about 14% from last year. And part of that is the staffing that we've been going through and trying to get officers back on patrol. You'll see that it's had a steep decrease since June. That is specifically based on our Sturrup grant overtime funding that ran out during that time period. And so we haven't had the overtime funds to from the [1:15:01 PM] grant to have officers specifically target the high speed roadways and collisions. But the good news is that's a state grant. So it wasn't affected by the shutdown. It's a fiscal grant. So it's now running again. And so you should see that red line start to go back up again. But we've issued a little over 11,000 citations this year through September. And so that is an increase from last year. And we expect that number to continue to increase. Talking about some of the campaigns that we've done this year, we typically partner with txdot or other groups to put on campaigns. Again, there's an educational component before the enforcement component. You can see that in March and April of this year, we did a distracted driving campaign. That is when people are on their cell phones driving. You can see the marked increase in citations that were issued during March and April of this year, and that was based on that campaign. Walking through a few more campaigns, we had a clicking and ticket campaign with txdot. It didn't really increase. And that is [1:16:03 PM] based on when you're when you're looking at seat belts, it is a little bit harder to to see if someone's wearing a seatbelt or not when they're driving around, versus we can all tell the person that's on their cell phone swerving in and out of a Laine. So but we did run that campaign. We ran a speeding operation slowdown campaign as well. You can see the numbers. You can see that in July we had our highest number of citations this year for speeding. We also did a dwi initiative downtown. And so we had our drug recognition experts that were working downtown over the spring and summer, and they were picking up shifts during the Friday and Saturday nights and looking for drunk drivers. And so you can see we made 49 dwi arrests during that time. It was very specific timing, very targeted to make sure that we were looking in the areas that we believed we had the highest amount of intoxicated drivers. So kind of moving forward of what we're doing to target and [1:17:03 PM] find out where we need to run traffic and where we need to be specific. I don't want to beat a dead horse. Everyone knows we've got a slight staffing shortage, and so that does kind of drive and make sure that we have to be data driven and figuring out where we're going to put traffic enforcement. And so we have weekly crime reduction meetings. And during those crime reduction meetings, we go over the hotspot locations for collisions throughout Austin. They're typically centered around high speed roadways, I-35 183 and things like that. And so we we will push out directed patrols for those areas and ask officers to go enforce citations specifically where we're having those issues. And we also talk about the infrastructure in those areas. So what we see a lot of is okay, on on I-35, there's a construction area here, seems to be a lot more collisions in this area. What can we do to partner with txdot to put better signage up, to make sure it's very clear, to reduce the amount of collisions there, in [1:18:05 PM] addition to the enforcement that we're taking there. In leveraging resources. We have a reserve officer program. While they can't run traffic, they can't go out and direct traffic at special events and things like that. And so we do have them out there directing traffic in those areas, trying to make sure that people are safe and being able to exit a special event, say, the football game or a festival or anything like that, and keeping people safe there. We also still have our commercial vehicle enforcement unit. This unit is done some amazing work. It's really comprised of a sergeant, two officers and a corporal right now, which is very small. However, they've done over 2000 inspections this year. So when f1 and the different groups come in and there's a lot of commercial motor vehicles out there, they're out there inspecting those trucks and making sure that they're safe to be on the roadway. And so out of those 2000 inspections that they've done this year, they've actually put 800 vehicles out of service until they could get [1:19:05 PM] things corrected and drive safely on the road. We also work with transportation and public works. They've worked with us a lot. You've seen a lot of their work down in sixth street around here. As we've moved on to having the streets open during the weekends and trying to make sure that we have safe traffic patterns for people and making sure that everyone understands it. And they've been an amazing partner with us. We've worked with the rideshare companies to geofence locations to make sure that we don't have people driving into an area where it's going to cause a traffic jam. So, for instance, on sixth street, we don't want people dropping people off where there's nowhere to jump into a bar. So we give them a location on seventh street and say, hey, here's a great place to drop people off where they can walk. It's only a block to get to where they're going, and then we can keep traffic moving and make sure that people aren't walking in the middle of the roadway to get to where they're trying to go. So looking ahead, obviously we've touched on staffing a little bit. However, we're going to end this year, I [1:20:06 PM] believe, with more officers than we we started it, which is a great place to be at. And so as we do that, we're looking at bringing back our motors units and our dwi units. And so those are critical. Prior to 2020, we had a 60 officer motors unit that did the majority of our our traffic enforcement, along with the officers that were on patrol. However, right now we're really relying on officers in between calls to be able to do that. Traffic enforcement or we're relying on the Sturrup grant, which is overtime funding for officers. And so as we build and and have more officers on the street, we're looking to build back that dwi unit, that that motors unit, so that we can have targeted enforcement and so much more that those motorcycle units can do. We're also relying heavily on data, as I spoke to before, in looking at data and making sure that we're following street segments of where collisions are happening and putting officers there. And so that's part of why you're seeing the increase in citations being written this [1:21:06 PM] year is because we're very targeted. And where we're going and making sure we're doing that. The other thing that I will say is that for residents that are concerned about speeding in their neighborhoods and areas like that, I was at a meeting with CM Laine yesterday, and we talked to some of their residents about, you know, traffic enforcement typically show up on our traffic patterns when we're looking at collisions because that's in high speed roadways. But we do look at the city's traffic calming ratings for those neighborhoods and being able to send people out. But when people have issues in their neighborhoods that they can contact their district representatives, all they have to do is Google Austin police department district representatives. It has a page on there. You click on it, you put in your address. It will tell you who your district representative is. And then we can get officers out there to enforce those issues. You may live in a school zone. You may live in a neighborhood where you're seeing speeding. And we're not seeing it because we're not seeing a high rate of collisions out there. But if you contact your district representatives, we can get people out there. And so for [1:22:07 PM] Sam lane's district, they reached out. We have officers out there doing traffic in the morning. And so those motors officers are assigned to patrol right now. And so we really try and target and go, okay, here's where the issue is. It's during the school hour in the morning when people are trying to go to work, kids are going to school, and we send one of our patrol officers that has motorcycle out there to target that area for an hour or 30 minutes to make sure that we can get some enforcement in those areas. And with that, I'll open it up to any questions you all might have. >> I appreciate that I've got just a couple before I kick us off, and I'll probably ask two, and then let other folks ask, because they may be asking about things that are specific to their district. The stats about fail, failure to maintain financial responsibility. Is that insurance? >> Yes, ma'am. >> Okay. Just wanted to make sure I understood that statistic. And then I had heard that motors division, there were some that were still out [1:23:07 PM] there. Can you talk me through how and when you assign someone to motors division and what that looks like on the road forward? I know you mentioned staffing levels and where you want to be ultimately. >> Sure. So we have two full time motor sergeants and they do a lot of work. However, there's no officers that are full time motors. That's an auxiliary unit. And so when we have specific initiatives, we can request and ask them to get out there and do that. But the motors that you're probably hearing about are officers that are assigned to patrol, but they still ride a motorcycle, so they're still responding to calls, but we have them ride the motorcycle so that during in between the calls, they can work traffic more efficiently because the the motorcycle officers are very efficient at being able to work traffic, get in and out of spots and be able to move, you know, when you come to work in the morning or wherever you're coming from, if you're on I-35 or mopac, you're stuck in traffic. It's very hard to move to get get around people. And that's the same for officers, right? Sometimes the shoulder is not wide enough. [1:24:07 PM] Sometimes us trying to move and and get ahead to make a stop causes more of a traffic jam, whereas motorcycles are able to move to the side and be able to move through that a little bit quicker and easier. >> That makes sense. Thank you. Vice chair qadri did you raise your hand? >> Yep. Thank you chair, and thank you for the presentation. Really appreciate everything that y'all do. I had two questions. First, it was around the public education and outreach program. It shows that the on the slide that it's shared across all social media platforms. Do you only see it if you are subscribed to the social media account or are there running ads? I just wonder how folks get the get the content. >> Yeah, I'd have to look and check with our public information office if there's ads as well on that. I know that obviously it's based on your algorithm. So depending on however, you have whatever social media platform you're set up for, you may get some extra stuff for the area you're in. But targeted ads I'd have to check on and look and see. I can let you know. >> Great. Thank you. And then my other question was, and this [1:25:08 PM] I don't know if there's a right or wrong answer for this one, but what more can be done to enforce distracted driving or, and or speeding? >> That's a good question. So obviously the educational campaign, we do it all the time. You're going to see it and you see txdot doing the same things. You see it on the toll roads and other areas where there's messaging put out. We're putting out messaging as well. That's probably one of the bigger complaints you have in traffic is people looking around and you can see the people on their phone, so we can run targeted enforcement on that if we have a specific place. But really that's an all over issue, right? We ran it back in, I believe, February and March, or it might have been March and April of this year in the downtown area. We did a couple different things with block the box and with distracted driving and really trying to watch. And we had a couple officers that were on motorcycles that were able to drive around the area and look for that specifically. So the sooner we're able to get that [1:26:08 PM] motor unit up and running, the easier it's going to be able to target that specifically to to do that as well as distracted driving is hazardous. And so the step grant would also cover that. So with the Sturrup grant we look at where the issues are. And we write that grant to the roadways that need covered. And so when we see those issues earlier this year we had it redone. So that would cover portions of sixth street so that we could use that overtime funding for there. So those are some things that we can kind of move around and target to deal with distracted driving. >> Great. Thank you. >> And councilmember Laine had her hand up. >> Thank you. Just first of all, thank you so much for the work you're doing. And yes, we had a public safety forum last night in my district. And the amount of praise and gratitude for having presence on this persistent area of trouble with speeding and a few other types of complaints that would benefit from more visibility of [1:27:10 PM] offers. Officers is so appreciated. I do have a couple questions. It sounds like your prioritization of where to enforce it looks at these high speed roads. What how are you defining high speed road? >> So when we're looking at high speed road, I don't know if I have a great answer for you right now, but you're typically looking at i35 mopac one 8371 and when I say high speed roadways, I'm looking at those roads as they're coming across on our collision reporting data. And those roads are the roads that I see directly relating to traffic collisions repeatedly. Occasionally you have something else on there. Maybe Lamar pops up, maybe some other areas pop up. But typically those are the four roads that I really see traffic at. And so those are obviously high speed roadways. And and that's why I refer to them that way. >> Okay. Sounds like highways. Okay. So that area where there's been increased patrol [1:28:10 PM] is actually also number six on the high injury road network list. And so I just want to elevate the possibility of also considering that particular ranking in, especially because there isn't right now transportation funding to do anything other than that. And I also want to elevate the possibility of considering school Zones as an area that could use focus. And I would like to note that some parts of the city have visibility of APD, and I know that's been a big priority for chief Davis, but also considering there are large areas of the city that don't and haven't for some time had any visibility from APD. And so perhaps motors enforcement and in the neighborhood areas where we don't find officers getting off of highways into where everybody is doing cut through speeding because of the traffic, [1:29:12 PM] I would love to see and and I'm happy to hear now if it's there, but otherwise I'm happy to just comment. Consideration of how to create visibility into some of the neighborhoods that don't don't have it. Having said that, I'm going to highlight the staffing thing because I know I don't have much time left, but I want to pause in case you want to say anything on any of what I said so far. >> Yeah, I just want to add to it that something that we are going back to, that we haven't done since before 2020 was districts for officers. And so by that I mean we have your sectors and officers were logging into them. And the staffing situation was, you know, the 4 or 5 officers that are here are going to work this sector. And so if we take the northwest area, that's Adams sector for us. That's about 50mi S. And you would have six officers working that area. Right now, you've got 8 to 10 officers typically working in that area because of the staffing structure and changes that we've made. And within that, typically each sector has about eight districts. And so we're able to put an officer in each district and you're seeing it across response times across [1:30:13 PM] the board for the city. Some sectors have have dropped their response times up to 30, 40 minutes, just by the increase of staffing from the moves that we made, but also by putting officers in districts. Right. So what happens when you're not in a district is all the officers go to this side because the calls are happening and then we kind of shuffle and it takes us a long time to get to places. And so putting officers in districts, yes, you're going to have some movement. You're not always going to be able to stay in your district, but that area is your responsibility. So that officer and you, we talked about it last night with the motors officer that's been going over there and providing specific traffic direction for that. That's now his district. And so he has a responsibility to knowing the businesses, the the communities, the people in his district and learning the problems. And by doing that, we really do have a focus on community based policing and knowing your area, knowing your district and being able to respond and know the issues. Because again, in a 50 square mile, if you're not responsible [1:31:15 PM] for a smaller area, you know, then everything just becomes overwhelming. And so by giving them that district, it really does help us focus on what you're looking at. >> And we're so happy to see the impact already from those changes. Thank you so much. Did I hear correctly that in 2022 there were 60 motor officers and now we have two sergeants and no assigned officers. So and and the need is to continue to provide overtime pay until we have some staffing. Okay. And I certainly certainly appreciate the challenges associated with that. I will make just one last pitch for in the areas where there aren't for other reasons, concentrations of officers creating some priority for visibility because it's at this point been years since it's been there. One last comment on page seven, the cooperation that's being done around transit and construction Zones. [1:32:17 PM] I hope that we can add to the list working with capmetro on those needs as well. It may already be there and just not on the slide. >> And we do work with capital metro a lot. >> So because I love to elevate the need with capmetro, we can absolutely. Thank you so much. >> Thank you I appreciate that. And capmetro has recently launched their own police force over the past year. And so I know that they do work collaboratively with Austin police. If there's anything that ever elevates to the point where they they need a thorough investigation, they're very good about saying, we're going to talk to Austin police to be able to sort through some of those issues. I had a couple questions, but councilmember vela, I'll go ahead and give you the floor. >> Thank you. Chair. The first of all, did I hear you say at the beginning that Austin had the lowest per capita rate of injuries and deaths on its roadways in Texas? I caught most of that statement, or. >> Per capita for the major cities, according to the last vision zero report that came out. >> That's a that's really [1:33:17 PM] impressive. And I mean, that's one of the highest risks of death. I know, again, people are very afraid of crime, but, you know, a car accident that causes a major injury or death is really the greatest risk. I think that most of us face on a on a day to day basis. And the fact that Austin is the safest city of the major cities in Texas to drive in is a testament to to the work that that transportation has done, that that you all have done. And really, to the people of Austin who, you know, just slow down, take it easy, you know, don't don't drive crazy. So that's a really glad to hear looking at the at the traffic citations, how does that compare to prior years? I mean thinking about ten years back, five years back. Do you have any sense of where our citation levels are compared to, you know, a while back? >> So if you're looking at prior to 2020, I keep referring to 2020. There's a lot of things that happen in 2020, right? Covid happened. We weren't certainly weren't out [1:34:18 PM] making traffic stops during covid. You know, unless it was very bad. All right. And so when you look back at around 2015 or so, we're drastically lower than we were then. Right. And that is that is a lot of it has to do with the staffing issues. And having that motors unit and being able to specifically go out there and target it. If you look at an officer who takes, you know, ten to 10 to 12 calls a day, their ability to stop and make a traffic stop in the in the middle of that is almost none, right? You know, occasionally there is time. There's certainly times where we can and and we prove that by increasing the the traffic citations we've ridden this year. But that is the the largest driver is being able to have officer staffed where proactive activity can happen. >> Yeah. And any sense of because our deadliest roadways are our highways combined with again some of the major thoroughfares Lamar and Cameron in my district come to mind. If [1:35:18 PM] we did have officers to issue citations, where would they be deployed typically? What does that look like? >> So when you're looking at that and we talked about having our weekly meetings where we're we're showing the commanders and the and I've started to work with our two motor sergeants to here's where our traffic issues are. Here's where collisions show up the most. Right. And so they're going to be in those areas the most. But the second part is CM Laine was talking about earlier. Is that calming list basically of hey, here's the neighborhood areas that we need to focus on. And so that's the second part is showing those motors officers showing those district commanders and the officers that are out there. Here's where the concerns are on a neighborhood level. On a smaller level, we're not going to see the crashes that we're going to see on a high speed roadway, but we do need to enforce it there. So high speed roadways where the collisions are at, that's going to be the priority. And so we see it broken down by sector broken down by block. This is the most collisions in this area. This [1:36:18 PM] is what we need to target and enforce. So that's how we would prioritize that. >> And the high crash roadways that would include you know your I-35 your 183 your 290. >> Yes, sir. >> Okay. Got it. Finally. And I think of New Orleans as a city that really launched that non-sworn response to non-injury. And again, I wish I had time to to dig into these details more. Sometimes we just get a very quick briefing on it, but it seems to have been very successful over there in terms of their officers, that they're having this kind of a specialized private unit respond to relatively minor crashes, where, again, you need it for insurance purposes. Right. But and that has freed up a lot of officers. We've talked about it. I know there's been some presentations on it. And again, seems like a great idea to me. Where are we on that. >> Yeah. So we are still. >> Looking at that. And we've looked at a lot of options now [1:37:19 PM] comparing us to New Orleans a little bit different because they have different state requirements. And so anytime we Wright a ccr3 that is required by the state to have an officer sign off on it. And so it makes little sense for us to go out and do a collision report with someone that is civilian and therefore a sworn person to come back on the back end and have to review everything again to be able to sign off on it. Now, are there collisions out there? Are there traffic hazards out there that don't require that ccr3 that someone could respond to? Absolutely. And I believe that's about 60,000 last year that were either collisions or road hazards that we could have have sent someone else to the hero program with. Txdot is an amazing program that comes out. They block roads, they do battery jumps. They they help people get off the road. And so we are still looking at that, and we have assistant chief Angie Jones is kind of leading that project and trying to see where we're going with that direction. >> And the cr three, could you explain that a little bit? [1:38:19 PM] >> Yeah. So the state has. >> A requirement for when you write an actual collision report through the state. Right. And so the cr three is that form. And so as you've seen in the last city auditor's report, when they were talking about the Troy Smith act, they talked about there's four requirements for that state collision. Now Austin, we do a lot more. We actually do more than double of that to make sure that we're covering everything that we need to. And so that's what that cr three is is the state's requirement. You will write a state collision report and send it into the state based on these types of collisions. >> And that's required for for any collision or that collision. >> There are very specific things. And so when there's injury, when there's a damage more than $1,000, which that's the tricky part. And you saw in the auditor's report where they're like, you know, we say when your car gets towed because officers aren't appraisers, they're not out there going, well, this I mean, [1:39:20 PM] you see a scratch on a car and it might be $10,000 worth of damage nowadays. So we don't ask the officers to try and figure out an appraised damage. We simply say if it's towed, then we know it's at that level. And we're going to make that report. >> Right. So so in other words, those the the potential is there for accidents that don't require a cr three, which would be again, minor accidents to deploy some of the the and again, they're not civilian. It's probably the wrong word because these are retired sworn officers or what are we looking at. >> Well it depends. So in new Orleans it might be just civilians. Some some areas might use retired sworn officers to do that job. And so it really depends on how you put that program together. And I know that we've looked at both ways. Right. So if you're looking at our reserve officers, obviously the ordinance for reserve officers would have to be rewritten. And there has to be a has to be enough funding to pay them to be able to go out there and do that. >> Great. Well, and I know that [1:40:20 PM] the reserve force that we do have right now, again, for traffic and special events and those kinds of things like that, that seems to have been really helpful. >> Very helpful. >> And as especially again, given the the prop Q situation and given the budget realities that we're facing, you know, again, I want our 1450 or how many officers that we have out on the streets kind of doing the core work, you know, property crimes, assaults, you know, violent crimes, that kind of stuff. And anything that we can shift off to, you know, contract out or to, to leave our to free up those critical police resources would be supportive of. So anyway, thank you very much. Thank you. >> Thank you. I've got just a couple of questions that haven't been asked already. What is the threshold for doing a targeted traffic enforcement similar to what was announced for 2222? Is it high injury crashes or is there is it quantity? What are the factors that go into that consideration. >> It kind of determine what [1:41:22 PM] you're asking for when you're saying initiative, right. So txdot does a lot initiative based on the data throughout the state, and we partner with them on almost all of those initiatives to make sure that we do them. However, there's really no threshold for us putting together an initiative based on complaints of citizens or issues that we're seeing. Right. And so I'll take 22, 22 as an example. Right now, we've got a lot of motorcycle racing speeding on that road. And we've had a lot of constituents call in. And so we have put a lot of effort towards 22, 22 and trying to stop that activity that's happening out there. And so we've done initiatives on our own based on that, based on hearing from the citizens out there that are saying, hey, this is an issue, us going out there and looking at it. And so it just kind of depends on the size of the initiative and who we're partnering with. >> Okay, I appreciate that. And then my last question is going to be about the sixth street safety pilot. I know that the [1:42:22 PM] chief has been making some considerations around opening the street back up to cars, narrowing the streets again. Can you talk a little bit about what you're seeing there in real time and what what you're factoring in as you decide what the actual makeup of how many lanes are on those, especially evenings and weekends? >> Yeah. >> Well, and for how many lanes we need and things like that, we rely heavily on transportation and public works to come in and tell us all about the traffic patterns, how many vehicle users are on that road, how many other people are out there for us, as far as keeping the roads open versus closing them? Our goal every weekend, unless it's south by Halloween weekend, things like that, is that we're trying to keep that road open as long as it's safe to do that now, when it becomes unsafe to do that, then we're closing down that road to make sure that we don't have a dangerous situation for the people that are going down there to enter the entertainment district. If you saw on Halloween, it's probably the busiest night we've had in 15, 20 years down there. I don't know if you've seen the videos, but it is absolutely [1:43:23 PM] crazy how many people that were down there during Halloween and we closed it down before that. Obviously, we can't have that many people in vehicles traveling through that roadway, so that's an easy call. But we are trying to keep it open, but we're also trying to work with the establishments down there, the bars and groups down there to make sure that the people down there that are participating in that are safe and able to do that. And so we judge it based on, you know, where things are at and, and how wide it's going to be. And ultimately, we'll take the direction of, you know, if we put in a bike Laine or, or whatever else and then coordinate with transportation and public works on what they feel is best for traffic patterns. And and when we need to close down the street, we will to keep people safe. And when we can keep it open and we feel that people are safe, we'll do that. >> Thank you. I know those of us that have been here for a long time are actually used to it being shut down, so hopefully that's something that, as you all make your decisions and are able to move through [1:44:24 PM] that to keep public safety at top of mind, that folks will be relatively flexible around. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. Does that do it for all of our questions? All right. Thanks, chief. Thanks for being here. Did our third public speaker, were they able to make it? >> Yes. She is here. >> Okay. Perfect. Why don't we give her her three minutes and then we'll approve the minutes, and then we'll move on to the other presentations. >> Hi, I'm Kate Hainsworth. I'm the organizer of the healthy street that is nestled between oltorf and south Austin neighborhood park. I came in January with a very small baby and promised to come back with pictures. And that's what I have here today. I have three seconds per picture, so I'm going to go pretty fast. But this is life on a healthy street. When we first put it in, at first the kids just want to ride their bikes around and around and around. The kids get hungry when they ride their bikes. I have gone through a lot of hot dogs enough to warrant taste testing. There is a clear winner. You can see me later if you're curious. Unless it's the morning, then they [1:45:25 PM] want breakfast sausages because a hot dog would be blasphemous on it's my park day. They gather with older neighbors to make seed balls and disperse them in the park. In partnership with Austin parks foundation. Emboldened by a captive audience, the kids will flex their entrepreneurial skills. We've had reptile shows, garage sales, summer camps run by teens and kids from neighboring blocks will know this is where to come to launch your startup. Here's someone at a park entrance with her lemonade stand. There's going to be a recurring kid dinner series where they all walk to one neighbor's house every Tuesday for dinner and socializing in the big kids. Walk them home after. They may or may not learn manners while they're there, you'll be convinced to shut down the block for Halloween and make trophies for the costume contest, and your husband will dress up like a traffic barrel, and you book a face painter a year in advance because they are a hot commodity, and the moms will start a one night [1:46:25 PM] bike gang of their own. We did a witches ride this year. It was actually a fundraiser for the heartening as well, because we all love to support. The kids are going to want to have shared front yard birthday parties with donuts that are extended via open invitation, invitation to all neighbors, and gather a couple birthdays that are in close proximity together. And when you plan ahead to meet at the park for a picnic, you have four texts. By the time you walk home asking if this is going to be a weekly thing, we made it monthly. First Friday picnics. This might have had something to do with the kid led reptile show and tell. This is Wyatt. I am sure you can hire him. You can find me if you need his details. When someone calls that there are eight abandoned puppies in the park on the coldest day of the year, you know the village will back you up and you go and get them. These guys are all in my trunk. They're all spayed neutered, vaccinated, dewormed, microchipped and adopted. It was exhausting. You will negotiate group discounts for [1:47:27 PM] mosquito traps, mulch delivery, etc. You might end up with a page of wi-fi credentials, door codes, and keys in your junk drawer. I can get into. I think most of my neighbors houses I don't, only in case of emergency, people are going to use the healthy street as a selling point when they list their house for sale, and buyers will buy specifically because of it to join the block. There's more. >> I really appreciate that presentation. Could you email it to us if you haven't already? I haven't seen it, but would love to be able to go through it. If we ever get a little spare time. That is wonderful. That was what I think living streets was really set up for, was being able to bring community back together and to create these types of opportunities. I'm sorry you ended up with eight puppies all of a sudden, but it sounds like they were lucky to have you. All right, let's move back to the minutes. I think we were [1:48:28 PM] going to just read into the record the calendar dates for approval so that we could approve those. Do you have those ready? >> Yes. >> Okay. Perfect. Let's do that. >> If my computer will work with me here. So the dates that I have that were approved last meeting are going to be sorry. My computer is still loading. January 15th, 2026 February 12th, 2026. March 5th, 2026. April 2nd, 2026. May 14th, 2026. July 9th, 2026 September 3rd, 2026 October 1st, 2026 November 12th, 2026. In December 10th, 2026 and those will be listed in the approved minutes as well. >> Okay, fantastic, I appreciate it. The motion is already on the table. It was made by council member Laine and seconded by council member vela. All in favor of approving those minutes. That is unanimous on the dais. We do [1:49:30 PM] not have council member harper-madison at the moment, so let the record reflect that. Then we will move on to item number three, briefing from Austin transportation and public works on the state of Austin bridges. >> And afternoon. >> Charged with maintenance and asset management planning for infrastructure, bridges and roadways. And I'm here to present state of bridges report. And during this presentation we will talk about bridge inventory, bridge conditions, funding available and not available, and discuss next steps, bridges, bridges and [1:50:34 PM] roadways. They are foundational for mobility. Bridges are well-maintained bridges. They are essential to connect opportunities or citizens and communities to opportunities to connect for public spaces, to connect community with different locations. And well-maintained bridges are essential for safety. They support health and sustainability. They support economic growth. Also, it needs to mention that they are affected by growth bridge inventory. I would like to start with a major bridges. Currently, we have 466 bridges in category major bridges with span over 20ft. On the right side you can see a cross-section of major bridges, starting with a typical cross-section culvert. Box. Culverts are arch bridge is and different shapes of culverts and pipes. Major bridges are [1:51:36 PM] inspected by txdot inspected once in two years, and txdot provides report to our department office of the city engineer. We also have 810 small culverts and bridges, so-called small structures. Those structures are inspected on a five year cycle, inspected by the city, by our department or contractors. We also have 20 pedestrian and bike bridges. They are inspected by the city. Also. We maintain we have urban trail bridges there outside of public right of way, and we plan and we are working to complete the assessment by fy 27. A little bit more about each of our major bridges. Average age of major bridges approaching their design life. It's 48.4 years old. Design life on average for bridges are 40 to 50 years, and we have 35% [1:52:38 PM] of our major bridges inventory approaching that past their design life and actually more approaching that way. I need to mention that all the bridges with increased traffic, increased load will experience in the future, and already experiencing increased deterioration rate. And it's very hard to predict when they need replacement and rehab. But we use our assessment to predict and plan for replacement and rehabilitation. And also we are facing in the future a large block of bridges approaching rehab and replacement needs. So we're trying to be proactive to bring your awareness for increasing infrastructure needs. About bridge condition, major bridges I mentioned txdot inspection on every two years. So office of the city engineer received the report from txdot. It's a comprehensive report that [1:53:38 PM] assess each bridge and every bridge element. And we calculate so-called composite structural rating for every bridge. However, we also have 311 report that we use to assess bridges. And also we inspect bridges. We conduct field inspection. We use our contractors or our engineers from Austin transportation public works. And based on that, we prepare a bridge maintenance annual service plan. And we identify bridges for rehabilitation and replacement. How we manage health of bridges, maintenance, maintenance, mostly reactive, and it's based on annual operating budget maintenance bridges. It's not like pavement maintenance when we try to be proactive and proactively maintain extend pavement service life with bridges. We touch bridges only when bridge in need of repair [1:54:40 PM] type of repairs. You can see it's railing repair, Paige concrete repair, fire damage. And we've been seeing a lot of increased fire damage last year. Prevent water from reaching reinforced steel for rehabilitation and replacement. It's more planned work and rehabilitating bridges based on. Sometimes it's to support structure. Sometimes we need to widen deck to accommodate on other modes of travel. And at the end of the life cycle, bridges must be replaced, funded through this type of work, rehabilitation and replacement should be funded or funded through bonds and grants. A bridge condition goals. Our department have certain goals we're trying to achieve based on our bridge assessment. Overall, we try to address immediate maintenance and bridge bridges that will likely [1:55:42 PM] need and address rehabilitation of those bridges that will likely need rehabilitation and replacement next 5 to 10 years likely. I want to emphasize on likely because it's very difficult. It's almost impossible to predict when exactly bridge needs to be replaced immediately. Right. And plus replacing bridge, it takes time, it takes years. So we try to be proactive as much as we can. Our goal number one and it's safety related, public safety related, that all bridges are rated structurally fair or better condition. So composite structural rating we try to achieve equal or more than five. And you can see in the table ranges of so- called csr composite structural rating from 0 to 1010 is excellent condition and zero is just basically collapsed. Bridge goal number two is funding related related to minimize the financial risk of unexpected failure. And it comes with a [1:56:43 PM] higher cost and longer, you know, bridge will be closed for long period of time. Our goal overall key performance indicator to maintain 90% of major bridges in satisfactory or better condition and 80% of small structures in satisfactory condition or better for bridge condition. Major bridges. We have average csr composite structural rating for our 466 bridges 6.5 which is satisfactory. All our major bridges in fair or better structural condition, and 95% is satisfactory or better condition. It's a good news. However, we have quite a few bridges that are in severe need of replacement or rehabilitation, and we need to act on those bridges as soon as [1:57:43 PM] we can. And a little bit more about those seven bridges on this slide. You can see first it's Barton springs bridge, 100 years old bridge. We receive Austin transportation public works received grant fhwa grant in fy 24. And we are currently in design stage redbud trail bridge. Currently we are working with consultant to identify best course of action replace rehab is seventh street bridge. Overpass structure is scheduled for substructure rehabilitation. Currently we don't have any funding and some other bridges. I can talk about them upon your request. About our smaller culverts and bridges conditions. Average césars for these structures. Higher are eight and then [1:58:44 PM] overall in excellent condition. However, there are two bridges that are identified in poor conditions. I need to mention that there is no public safety concern because those smaller structure how composite structural rating works. It's basically weighted average of all elements. Its structure itself culverts and channel the channel. So it could be something maybe joint ceiling needed or some structure under bridges, a little bit disfigured and needs to be replaced. So there is no public safety risk here. And overall you can see distribution. We have 99% in satisfactory or better condition. Here is based on our assessment, we estimated that 18 bridges in need, smaller structure in need of rehabilitation or replacement. And of course we need a preliminary engineering report, prior recommendations and design here is estimated 15 [1:59:45 PM] million. We need for replacement and rehab of small culverts and bridges and distribution them over the city. Bridge condition for pedestrian and bike bridges. Average csr for pedestrian and bike bridges is 6.4 overall satisfactory. And we do have one bridge rated in poor condition and it's closed currently for public use. There is a good news. There is detour available not far, but that bridge needs to be replaced. 80% of bridges in satisfactory or better condition. Also we have some bridges connecting trails that are outside of right of way, and we are working to assess those bridges to develop, assessment and assess those bridges and their rating. It will be completed by fy 27. For pedestrian and bike bridges. We have ten bridges in need of [2:00:45 PM] rehabilitation and replacement. And of course pr has must be completed prior to that. And we estimate 6 million just for construction and replacement. I mean replacement itself. And you may see bridge distribution over the city on the map. Funding for maintenance funding. As I mentioned, we use operating budget in fy 26. This fiscal year, we have about 2 million, 1.8 to be exact for transportation public works. That includes our contracted work and street and bridge bridge crew. Couple years ago we recommended and we established a bridge crew, and it helps us a lot to make use of our public funds more efficient because contractors, it cost a lot to to do small repairs of bridges for mop and mop. So we do basic repair with maintenance program. It's [2:01:46 PM] service repair, guardrail railing, vegetative debris removal, fire damage, fencing, riprap, and minor concrete work for rehabilitation and replacement bridges. Just to repeat myself that they are very critical links in our to keep Austin moving. They are critical for public safety. They're critical for emergency operations, critical just for day by day life and if not addressed, if we are not receiving funding for, replace or rehabilitate bridges, we may need to load rate bridges or close those bridges that we find deficient. And it would require detours. Detours. Are there inconvenience at least, and also it just increasing emergency response time. And it's the safety public safety concern and create congestion. So and as I mentioned before, it's very difficult to predict [2:02:46 PM] when exactly rehab and replacement need. So we use our overall assessment that we based on csr analysis of txdot our internal inspection. And we're trying to come up with the best recommendation we can with the data we have. Finding a rehabilitation and replacement. Currently, we assess that all our bridge assets, it's cost about like 3 billion in bridge assets. And with very optimistic hundred year life of bridge and 1% replacement per year, bridge needs could be as high as 30 million per year at so-called annualized approach. And based on condition assessment, we estimated that over the next 20 years, we would need 400 million condition based approach and current funding. We have some funding, I believe about 62 million available. They are allocated for specific projects. They are not enough. [2:03:47 PM] And future funding, of course are determined through bond process, grant pursuit and to address the most critical urgent needs. And this slide summarizes just our assessment and estimate on needs for rehabilitation and replacement for major bridges. We estimate 125 million needed in five years nearest five years. For small bridges, we need 16.5 million. Considering preliminary preliminary engineering reports and for pedestrian and bike bridges we need 7 million. Considering preliminary engineering reports included and total estimate it's about 149 million. And after that, considering that we have 62 million available, and after that, it's our estimate that every year to maintain our bridges safe for public, we need 30 million per year. [2:04:49 PM] Unfortunately, investment in bridge rehabilitation replacement wasn't enough over the years. We looked at years since 1998 and on average it's less than 3 million for capital program was allocated, which is barely enough. So it's 73 million we received since 1998. And our next steps, we will continue to prioritize available funding to enhance bridge safety, to keep them in good, serviceable condition to our community. We will complete csr that we are working on. We will develop street and bridge rehabilitation plan. Actually, we continuously working on this plan, analyzing and moving it current as bridge bridges age continue to seek alternative funding sources, federal or state grants and complete inventory and inspection of pedestrian and bike bridges in the urban trail network in fy [2:05:52 PM] 27 and complete routine inspection of small bridges in next inspection cycles, which will be fy 28, and develop the requirements for an automated bridge management information system implementation that continues to align with the federal specification. And it concludes my presentation and we are happy to answer any questions. Thank you. >> I really appreciate all of this robust information. I know we've been able to get briefings on street maintenance, and so it's good to get to see the other side of this, which is what does it look like to maintain and revitalize the bridges that we have in Austin? I was surprised to see there's only 20 bike ped bridges. How does that interact with our trail network? Does? Are those classified as culverts or something else if they're a little bit smaller? Or can you talk me through that? >> Yes. Those are only 20. Just because they and the public right away with the trail network. Unfortunately, we still don't have a good [2:06:54 PM] understanding of how many we have. So we will be working on trail network the outside of right of way. Right? So not on connecting roadways. We will be conducting that assessment by fy 27. >> Fantastic. I was able to participate in a panel recently that was talking about trail maintenance in particular, and how to utilize gis in maintaining our trails. And so I think there's a lot of overlap there that we can be helpful with to try to understand what do our smaller bridges look like if they're only getting bicycles, pedestrians, strollers, puppies, all all that good stuff that austinites have on the trails. And so I think I want to make sure that we're kind of in the the cutting edge forefront of how we're monitoring and maintaining even the smallest infrastructure, because there's still a lot of people that utilize that. Can you talk me through a little bit? If txdot over the past few years has changed how they do their on system, off system work, I know [2:07:57 PM] that they do have divisions that will assist with bridge maintenance or replacement. That is not on txdot right of way, but I'm just not sure if Austin is having to step up and do that all on our own, or if there's any rules that have changed over the past ten years or so, like does txdot or campo help us with any of these funds? >> Do you like to? >> Ed puppet from the office of the city engineer? The off system structures are competing for a limited amount of funds. So all across the state there's a lot of counties and cities competing for those funds. Austin has received some of the off system funding in in the past, but it's very limited. And it's just been a few projects here and there. So for the most part, you hit it right on the head. We are mostly taking care of ourselves. We do try to, you know, compete for funding when it's when a program is out there. But txdot [2:08:57 PM] is in the same situation as most are. They're trying to cover a lot of territory with limited funding. So there's a lot of other folks competing for those off system funds. >> I appreciate that. I know everyone at this point is looking at how we maintain resources that are currently operating. This is going to be an increasingly difficult conversation because bridges are so much more expensive than roadway maintenance. And so I think that's something we're going to have to look at over the next few years, is how do we maintain our own infrastructure? And I know there's other folks here that have stepped up to serve on campo. And I know that through my time there, there's there's definitely a competition for what are the needs of smaller communities and what are the needs of bigger communities. But as all 11 of us on the dais are going to be approaching conversations around limited resources moving forward, I you know, I'm always worried that we're not able to contribute the same way that we would like to. And I think, you know, some of our investments are high [2:09:59 PM] priority. If they are health and safety issues, they're going to be high priority. But that means it's going to start pinching out some of the other things that aren't bridges and, and public safety and other things like that. I think I have just one other question. Slide 14 had the pinpoints of all of the culverts, small culverts and bridges. The blue one at the north of district eight, Westlake drive, is that one being incorporated through the work that's being done on 360 right now, or is that something separate? >> I don't believe. >> That would be separate txdot structures within the txdot maintained rights of way are completely separate from what we're showing here. Are city maintained structures within our city rights of way, so they'd be completely separate. We do occasionally have projects that combine, but that's very unusual that there's something that isn't clearly in one or the other's jurisdiction. >> Okay, that's good to know. [2:10:59 PM] So every pinpoint on this map of the small culverts and bridges is something that we are having to. >> These are city city controlled structures and maintained. Yes. >> Okay. That's helpful. I know of one example in southwest Austin where it was Williamson creek at old bee cave road, and with txdot being being able to move forward with the project that they're doing right now, they were able to incorporate that bridge into some of their their schematics and to be able to move forward with that project. But I think that's a rare case where they tend to say, why don't you let us handle that and we'll work it out. So we very much appreciate that because it helps us stretch our dollars a little bit further for other parts of town. Are there any other questions from committee members? Vice chair qadri okay. >> Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. What a important what an important presentation. If we don't have. Our bridges properly maintained, it affects all the mobility, whether it be cars or transit or bikes. So you know this is something that's extremely important. I know that we all care about on [2:11:59 PM] this Dyess. And we'll all be working towards. But just have one question. It's in two parts though. What do you expect grant opportunities to look like in these next few years? And outside of outside of the city bond funding. And then does it look better or worse than historical years at the state and federal levels? Obviously, we have a very chaotic state and federal government. >> This is a very good question. And, you know, I wish I had a crystal ball. We got lucky. Our office applied for grant in fy 24. That's how we got grant. What we can do just only monitor websites and hope that we will have to see infrastructure grant. And it's all in mercy of federal government and state. If we have state grants available of federal grants, we will apply. And it's very hard. It's very hard to predict what's going to [2:13:01 PM] happen. I hope I hope that our officials will recognize infrastructure, need replacement because national nationwide infrastructure, infrastructure is actually getting older bridges, roadways. And we do need funding. >> If I could add just a little bit to that, we're we're pursuing as many opportunities as we can and scanning for those. But there is a lot of competition for those. So even when there are great opportunities and it does appear that there are still programs out there that are helping folks, we're facing a lot of competition. So we've applied for a number of grants that we haven't received and a few that we've been happy to receive. So that's something that's an ongoing, constant thing that we're looking for those opportunities to leverage those funds when we can and we keep looking for those opportunities. >> Thank you for that question. [2:14:01 PM] Council member. I wanted to add a little bit. Campo does have a call for projects that's going to be coming up, in which we will be very active in that process. That call for projects is going to be taking place, or the applications are going to be due January 20th. Excuse me. January 30th, 2026. However, working backwards, there's going to be multiple sessions that staff is going to have with council. And so we can start to select the the correct priorities of potential projects that we have that we're going to submit for. And to give you an idea of the projected amounts, there's the surface transportation block grant or stb funds. There's projected to be about 330 million there in the transportation alternatives set asides T a S a about 40 million there and carbon reduction [2:15:02 PM] program about 13 million that is projected in those particular categories. But we're going to be as aggressive as possible and developing a plan and working that plan with with you all the council members. >> Great. Thank you. >> Do you have other questions from committee members? No. Sounds like that was very thorough. We appreciate you. Thanks for that presentation. All right. The next one I'm going to call up is going to be a briefing on Austin transportation and public works on the living streets program. And as you are taking your seat, I just want to remind folks in the audience, we are ending at 245 today. We have another special commemoration that we will be taking up at that time. So I think as we get closer to the end of our program, this is a great one for us to end on. And then we've got a couple of housekeeping items after that. >> Excellent. >> Thank you, council members, [2:16:03 PM] for having us. My name is Matt. I think you guys know me by now. This is, I think, my sixth time in front of you talking about living streets specifically. And if you could. Oh, I get it. Control. Never mind. We're going to give you a quick update on living streets and where we're at. And I'm going to be brief about this because I'm also excited about the reward award coming up. So first we're going to talk about fy 25 fiscal years updates and tell you where we're at and going. But then we're going to tell you about, I think the long awaited answer to everyone's question is, how do we make these more community oriented and better looking installations with longer impact? So fy 25 stats for living streets, you know that there are three different applications out there. Neighborhood block parties is one of those. It's a single block and it's set up for a one day use. One of the things in the resolution that was put forward for staff to execute [2:17:04 PM] was, please fix the application process. And I'd like to say that we proudly launched that in October of this year. And I think the quote on the screen says it all way simpler site. I hope I did it right. It was almost too easy. And coming from Amanda, that is actually huge kudos because Amanda is set up for everything from construction closures to emergency management to right of way changes and any other permitting that we're doing. So to be able to simplify this process and make it more user friendly for our neighbors that aren't necessarily in this industry. It's a huge step forward for the program. I think in January of last year, you were asking me for numbers of projected in terms of budget for this fiscal year, and we told you somewhere around 30 to 40. And I'd I'm happy to say that we hit those numbers, doubled them and took it a [2:18:05 PM] little bit further. So year to date, we have done 114 installations across healthy streets, place streets and neighborhood block parties. The 30 to 40 was supposed to be healthy streets and place streets. We found a lot of efficiencies with our teams and our growth patterns, our installations, and most importantly, that the residents actually wanted to renew a lot. So we did 40 unique locations for healthy streets and play streets. Out of that 74 applications. We've also done some preliminary test data since that was our first full year of activations, and on our healthy streets and play streets, it's much harder to project on a neighborhood block party because they're one day, one moment in time. We saw 9% reduction in speed, a 10% decrease in vehicular volume, and a 62.5% reduction in vehicular collision. I'm going [2:19:05 PM] to preface that this is a small data set, and we're still collecting data, but it tells us we're moving in the right direction. Our qualitative survey shows still an extremely high approval rate of 65% in support, 7% neutral and 28% opposed. But what we heard most is that the equipment is still not right. I'm going to come back to that later statement. We are seeing change in where and how these are going in. What we do know is that areas in district four, seven and nine are some of our older roadways in Austin. They most likely do not have a sidewalk application. They're roughly 30ft in width, have parking on both sides, and are strong family oriented neighborhoods. And as such, the connectivity [2:20:05 PM] is often what we call a class one roadway, which means it's almost all residential roadways. And if you have an entire neighborhood of residential roadways, something still acting as a slightly higher volume. And a lot of people see this as an opportunity to enhance their neighborhood and bring this forward. So within the area just south of Anderson, between burnet and Lamar, we have several applications to the point where we're actually deferring one application for each six months so that we're not congesting the network connectivity, but we're creating that behavior change within the neighborhood. In addition to that, we are seeing growth in our equity analysis zone. This is the area where our neighbors are the medium high to most vulnerable. Per Austin transportation statistic analysis. And that's also where we see direct connectivity, [2:21:06 PM] larger family growth, lower income families. Connectivity to school is lacking, sidewalks are missing, and living streets is a viable option for us to come in and provide safe routes to those locations. So this is a perfect moment for me to go back to talk about the equipment and give you guys where we're at on our healthy streets. So our original installation had nine pieces of equipment, two signs. They said local traffic only. That's what you see on the left side of the screen. This was considered Orange clutter. It send mixed messages. Most people were told us it's obtrusive. It's a lot. And more importantly, I'm looking for the construction equipment, not the kid at play. We are moving to the final solution, which is more in line with the vision set forth in [2:22:08 PM] the resolution. So our goal here is to make it more community oriented, bring in planners and additional equipment that is longer term. And that's because we are seeing the need for community engagement. But we are also seeing the need that these individuals that are applying for our programs are actually looking for long term solutions and renewing. So the equipment is out there for a longer period of time. We will save money by doing the interim decreasing down to six counts. So a 30% decrease as we design, develop and install the better looking planter based curb block installations. We've also already taken the opportunity to go with the interim solution, and that's actually being forward deployed as we speak. It includes enhanced signage, which is the pedestrian and [2:23:09 PM] vehicular sign, a living street sign on all streets so that people identify it as a living street. And yes, it's still the Orange cone. So yes, we are aware that that is still one of the requests of our residents council and even our team within transportation and public works to change that. But the way to get there is this in July, we hope to roll out our final idea behind a healthy street to get to there. We are already in the process of doing the interim solutions and reducing those Orange cones. That's going to save us considerable money over the next coming months. That money will be used to procure the equipment to do the final installation layouts. At the same time, we've used the remainder funding from previous fiscal year to procure equipment to test these and engineer them. We are going to be running a focus group study with some of our applicants. Kate, who presented to you, is [2:24:09 PM] one of those applicants who will be out looking at our shared streets, our transition from healthy streets to shared streets, but also looking at how those closures actually translate that divide. And then once we have that design, we will pilot that phase out for 5 to 8 ish streets, test those on our healthy streets, get our feedback. By April, we should have enough feedback. We can come up with a final configuration, layout and equipment needs, adjust our budget, and put forward the plan to procure. Use the remaining funds for this year to deploy as many as we can in this fiscal year and sustain the current fiscal ask through next year as we buy out the equipment. And the reason this is all really important is because we actually have a kind of third phase to this. And that's what you're seeing on [2:25:11 PM] the left is our proposed kind of latest configuration of our healthy streets. I've shown you the previous one where I said it's like our final plan before. That's a art sketch that we did as a concept idea. This is a more involved rendering that we've done to start to mimic what we're going to do. And our second goal, and that's to move to more permanent infrastructure, assured street and healthy street both act as shared streets in that they don't have sidewalks. Pedestrians are sharing the road whether we'd like them to or not, with vehicle traffic and what we know from our history, from data collection and best practice, is that some separation between vehicle and pedestrians is a huge increase in safety factor. As we move forward with the healthy street program, our goal is to use the healthy street program as the [2:26:12 PM] entry point into the shared street program. And that's why you're seeing a similarity in layout configuration in our healthy street, long term, more temporary based equipment, but that could sustain a longer period of time as we come with the funding for the shared street, it's about a 1 to 10 budget ratio, and then a shared street to a sidewalk is about another 1 to 10 ratio increase. In doing this, we expedite our design and delivery service, increase our community engagement, and provide the neighborhoods exactly what they're really asking us to do in a way that they're more familiar with, more comfortable with, and have acclimated to over time. That decreases the amount of design work that we need to do in engineering work on the back end. And it means that we have templates, profiles, and a kit of parts that we can forward deploy on these streets that need to be prioritized for our shared [2:27:13 PM] streets program to be successful, which ultimately takes them out of the sidewalk. Priority cost. That's a significant cost savings over time, resources and staffing. And that's where I'll end my presentation. >> Fantastic. Well, I appreciate these graphics. I know we've been hearing a little bit about the difference between the flexi posts. You know, the ones that are Orange that are temporarily installed, and just some of the visual clutter that happens with this. And so I'd love to see the mindset that we can actually make these beautiful. We can make them useful. We can put pollinator plants in them. We could actually get to a place where you see something and you think, oh, I actually want to slow down because there's things happening here rather than just plowing through. I have a lot of neighborhoods in my district that are super wide, and I'm interested in the conversation around being able to create some pinch points just to slow traffic down. We have folks going, you know, 50 [2:28:13 PM] plus miles an hour down a neighborhood street. A lot of these neighborhoods were built when they were not in the city limits. And then subsequently, we're on the hook for maintaining them and responding to crashes and trying to cross walk our way through school safety. So there's a lot of things that I think can be addressed by this type of infrastructure. So I'm really excited to see all the progress that's being made. I'll just plug in. I would love to see these deployed a little earlier, but I'll just put that on the record and see see what comes of it. Do we have any questions from other folks on the dais? Let's start with vice chair qadri. >> Yeah, I got a funky weird question, but I don't think it's that funky weird. I think it's a good question. In district nine, we see a lot of alleyways being used as, you know, being activated. It's where community kind of comes together. Could we make alleyways into living streets? >> In theory, yes. Anything below a class one can actually become a living street. So class one to class zero, which is what an alleyway is. What would need to look at is how many driveways are exiting onto [2:29:14 PM] that. What is the width of the road, what are closure would be for it? But we've also looked at how a neighborhood block party could actually be activated in an alleyway, how pedestrian corridor thoroughfares could be activated in alleyway. So these are conversations we are having. We're also looking at other cities, have done alleyway initiatives and concepts behind alleyways and how to engage the audience in that. I think last time we presented, there was a resident who came prior to us and asked about activating some downtown alleyways and how they could possibly do that. The triggers a lot of conversation when it comes to council, and then our team hears about it. We can actually brainstorm and contemplate around that. >> Okay, great. Yeah, I was at a yeah, I guess I guess it was a party of sorts in an alleyway. And that sounds weird. >> You were in an alley party? >> Yeah, I was in an alley party. It was a rally in an alley. That's what it was called. And it was great. And [2:30:16 PM] it just all the neighbors coming together and kids playing and, you know, music and bubbles and chalk on the ground. It was great. So great. Well, you answered my question. Thank you. >> Yeah. No problem. Thank you very much for the question. >> I would be remiss not to mention that the block party program came full circle for me. I got invited to a block party after all the work that we've done with living streets and healthy streets and block parties, and I was very excited to get to walk into this thing that I had nothing to do with, had not pushed on anyone. They just put it together for their block. And it had a fire truck, a bouncy house, a food truck. It had games in the back, live music, and there were probably about 400 people, most of which were children. So it was a very great thing to see in this south Austin neighborhood that, you know, families could come out, people were inviting friends, and everybody was able to kind of enjoy this pre- halloween extravaganza. It was it was just really, really fun to get to see and that, you know, we didn't have to push it on anyone. They just found it, [2:31:17 PM] came up with the idea themselves, and that the tool worked well enough that they were able to utilize this. And it was it was a fantastic time. Council member vela did I see your hand come up? >> Just got can't let a presentation on the healthy streets shared streets go by without giving a shout out to district four. We love our healthy streets and shared streets. We're the number one district that's been applying and I expect that will continue. >> So the trend overall is once one district has one, the growth around that has continued to occur. So council member Ellis, councilmember Lang, you asked us how can we get more out to you? And the idea is that get one and you actually both have two that are moving in a very successful pattern right now, and we're coordinating with once that happens, other people will know about it and it will come full circle. But reach out to your constituents. We know that this program actually has the safety factors that our residents are looking for on their [2:32:18 PM] residential streets. I agree with you, council member Ellis. There's nothing more wonderful than actually going out to one of these events and just being like, wow. And with that said, I'll if no one else has any other questions. Council member Laine. >> Council member Laine has one. >> You anticipated the question that I had waiting, which is wonderful. This I think this is a great presentation. I really you know, I love a lot about this program and I particularly enjoyed in this presentation how you're bringing forward the implications of these renewals to the need for permanent improvements, and how that ties back to safety and safety reduction in speeding and these sorts of things. I find that very related to the first presentation we had. And, you know, we know that in some other areas there are limitations in dpw funding right now to do infrastructure improvements. There are limitations on APD funding to do speeding enforcement, and [2:33:20 PM] even to the extent that that's happening, it the speeding enforcement is only happening on highways and not around our school Zones. And where the cut through traffic is happening because of the construction and congestion and all of that. Having said all that. I, I, I do recall the rating that you did in the last presentation when you came, of which districts have the greatest potential based on type of street to benefit from this. And I believe that district six was rated second. I know we have all these other issues we're currently. You know, we did get a wonderful targeted enforcement on a street that is now sixth in the high injury road network, which is not a road designed for traffic. It is purely a neighborhood street that's being used for cut through onto old spicewood springs road. That was a long intro to ask the two questions one. How can we do? We need to do more of what I'm about to say, and if so, how can we have [2:34:21 PM] some of these? Safety considerations that other aspects of tpw and other departments in the city are collecting data, data on inform places where geographical locations, where the department wants to do targeted outreach to get that first 1 or 2 going, or to bring this method to addressing safety considerations, particularly considering that, you know, living streets are these neighborhood streets where we we know that other resources aren't necessarily being directed towards Wright. I mean, is that already happening and to what extent? >> So, yes, that is already happening. Over the last several months, I've been working with our executive team across our entire department, with director Mendoza, assistant director Jim Dale, my ad, Elizabeth Boswell in the back of the room, and others to actually start to configure and coordinate some of this movement with the new addition of the planters, the concept, the pilot, we're going to be [2:35:22 PM] doing a outreach program around that. When we did this last time, we received over 300 applications. We're going to be targeting some of those areas that we know are in need. So that would be part of the outreach and marketing plan. But in addition to that, one of the things that we found is most effective is going out to the neighborhood associations, and we're happy to do that. The division I'm under is called the community service division. We fully believe that as part of our paramount plan, in addition to that, we're supported with our public information office and together we make a great engagement team, even when we don't have the answer to the current problem. Oftentimes it's, well, how do I fix the traffic light? Well, that's not my program specifically, but I will take it back and we'll make sure that it gets to the right division. And in doing that, we're creating those relationships. So I'd encourage [2:36:22 PM] you to reach out to your neighborhood associations and say, hey, we're happy to come out and talk because that is that hand and face direct connection. It's paramount in terms of identifying with individuals. We're also seeing that in east Austin, where, frankly, the city hasn't always been trusted as a face and a representative. But as we make progress and we're seeing this change, we are shifting further and further east. Every cycle we go. And that's to me, that's the positive growth about what the project can do, because it is about community outreach. It is about the engagement. It is about hearing the voices of our citizens, neighbors and our residents and bringing it back to our entire team that sits behind me today. They're all fantastic. We are all in this for the right reasons. Civil service I think most of us are potentially could be making [2:37:22 PM] more money in the private sector, but we love this work, right? I mean, I'm moved to tears every time Kate comes before me, and I'm always glad that there's a break in between her and me. That said, that's across the board for Austin transportation public works, so I'd encourage you to help us engage with those communities, because we don't always have direct connection to the right neighborhood association or the right member. But those that we do, we meet with on a regular basis. >> Do you do you have currently a list or any kind of ranking of the the streets that have safety considerations that would elevate it or is. >> Yes, we do. We have that in both our speed management program. We have that in our vision zero program, and we have that in our sidewalk prioritization program. All three of those things help inform the priorities that we are putting forward for shared streets, play streets and neighborhood block parties as [2:38:23 PM] well. >> Okay. And just one last question. As you're moving towards these more permanent solutions, when you get new interest, are you starting from the temporary ones and then seeing the interest in renewal, or are you jumping like, how are you handling that aspect. >> Right now? We're going to be in that interim period of phase where we still have to pilot it, and we still have to make sure that the behavior change is right and that we have a right amount of infrastructure. What we don't want to do is deploy something that is considered unsafe. >> That's what I was. >> Hoping to hear as a perception thing. No matter what we deploy, it will be code compliant the best that we can possibly do. That said, there is a perception of safety that's equally as important as to the physical safety. So that's why from the first slide to the second slide, you saw flexible delineators added to the infrastructure. And that's to protect that island that is taking it out of the vehicle traffic Laine, turning it over essentially to sidewalk and allowing us to put planters or medians into that area. That [2:39:26 PM] whole process is the engineering process that we've been going through since last time I presented. And yes, that is the game plan and goal here is to move towards that goal. >> Thank you very much. It's really a pleasure to see that progression from a pilot towards permanent. That's maintaining the continuous improvement. >> Yeah. >> Thanks so much. >> With that said, if you are interested in Kate's final presentation and seeing all of it, the play streets are actually hosting in conjunction with all of the living streets and in partnership with safe streets Austin, a specific living street gathering this Saturday. Please reach out to me if you'd like to attend. It's actually for our applicants. It's not for us to take a podium or promote the program. It's so that they can actually talk with each other about how to better organize activities, events. And Kate will be presenting. If you give a neighbor a living street, this is how it goes. So please [2:40:28 PM] have your staff reach out and we'll make sure that you get the location. >> We appreciate it. Thanks for the work you do. >> Thank you. >> All right. The next item on our agenda is going to be the report by atif, related to ongoing mobility programs. Sometimes there's not a formalized presentation. Do you want me to just read the the headlines real fast? Perfect. The director says that's okay. The first one is that the city has commemorated ten years of vision zero in Austin, and releases a program's ten year report. I just got my report. So if you see anything like this, make sure you check it out. Ten years of having a vision zero program has been really, really helpful in our community for street and road safety and making sure that we're designing streets that function for everybody. The city has broken ground on a Cameron and dessau road safety project. The there's 250 plus sidewalk miles, 29 safer intersections and improvements [2:41:28 PM] at 120 schools and more. So there is a map that highlights progress on the mobility bonds, which is great to see. Construction has begun to address the gap in the shoal creek trail. I know that's a high priority for a couple of offices. Congress avenue urban design initiative moves forward, so there's some new information in a project website to be able to reference for congress avenue. And we've got the airport breaks record for busiest day ever after f1 weekend 2025. I know there's a handful of city departments that spent between the two weekends of acl, and then to have f1 hit right after that, followed by a rally that had tens of thousands of people show up. There were a lot of people that were burning the candle at both ends, and we certainly appreciate our all of our departments stepping up and making sure that everybody is safe. We also have improvements on the longhorn dam multimodal project. So that is one that a [2:42:28 PM] few of us have gotten to see get better and better and better over the time that it's been under construction. And I cannot wait to ride my bike across it, because that will be a very, very happy day for many people. New destinations taking flight at the airport and I think that does it. We are right about time, so I hope there's no questions on any of those items. Otherwise, reference the report or reach out to transportation and public works staff briefings by memorandum. We did not include any of those on this agenda, but we will have a list that will be included for December. And then the last item is identify items to discuss at future meetings. We have a whole list of items that we are working our way through to try to schedule out what can be handled later this winter, what can be handled in the spring time, depending on what is the appropriate timeline for some of these projects. But I will just briefly read through December. We hope to do an update on I-35 capital express central project, mostly around the northern stitch options, as [2:43:30 PM] they're doing some public outreach right now. Parking impacts and boardwalk project bidding and construction and cap decision timelines. So in 2026, the city council is set to look at what our next phase of commitments for that project. Another item is micromobility that we are trying to open back up and figure out kind of what is the status of the moratorium on scooters in downtown? Where are we at with the folks that are providing that service, and what can we do with curb management study urban trails and sidewalks, program update, and sixth street pilot update? So we've got a few things slated for December. If there's other things folks want to daylight. Now, we've got about one minute before we do our special ceremonial presentation. >> Sure, I'll take like 10s pt update, just getting updates on that and all phases, etc. Of that. >> All right. Anything else people want to daylight at this moment, you're always free to reach out to us or city staff [2:44:30 PM] to try to get another item on the agenda. Okay. And with that, we have kept this on time. It is 2:44 P.M. And I will adjourn the mobility committee meeting for Thursday, November 13th. Thank you all.