Mobility Committee (MOBC) Meeting Transcript – 2/12/2026 Title: ATXN-1 (24hr) Channel: 1 - ATXN-1 Recorded On: 2/12/2026 6:00:00AM Original Air Date: 2/12/2026 Transcript Generated by SnapStream ================================== Please note that the following transcript is for reference purposes and does not constitute the official record of actions taken during the meeting. For the official record of actions of the meeting, please refer to the Approved Minutes. [1:02:42 PM] Welcome to the mobility committee. It is 1:02 P.M. And I am the chair of the mobility committee, Paige Ellis. I am joined by council members Natasha harper-madison, our vice chair, zo qadri and mayor pro tem chito vela. I don't believe that council member Laine is going to be able to join us today, so we will just have the four of us working through this agenda today. We got two public communication speakers. >> I just had one more sign up. So we have three. >> All right. Three public communication speakers. Let's go ahead and take those. >> If I can have. Philip Wylie. >> Good afternoon everyone. My name is Philip Wylie, downtown resident. And I will be your host of mobile jeopardy today. We have three questions and [1:03:44 PM] answers to go through. Unfortunately, you're not going to be able to speak, so I'm going to do it all for you. The first one is this was the busiest central city transit area and mode during the recent freeze shutdown. Tick tick tick tick. The answer is why are all those pedestrians using the Rio grande bike Laine from 21st to 24th? Well, the reason is because the ice melted there first. It had a lot of traffic. And there's only one Laine of traffic. It's actually the template for what we should try to be doing, which is using mobility and mobility restriction restrictions to create main street type of atmospheres. Second question please. This airport has the us longest average walking distance from entrance to gate. Now, if you want to get the [1:04:44 PM] answer to this, you can ask a lot of similar type of questions of whatever ai you're using. But there seems to be consensus that it's Dallas fort Worth, and I used to go through there all the time. The average distance is a mile and a half to over two miles. And these other statements are generic. For airports in the us, 68% of travelers spend at least an hour walking. So why are people telling you that ten minutes is all that people will walk to a transit station? That's because it's a different problem that they're trying to solve. 40% of passengers report report annoyance at the walk link. So if we talk about statistics, sometimes when we talk about averages, we're talking about different people. There are different categories. Last question please. This residential site, the speaker who is me, considers the epicenter of compact and connected. If you could add [1:05:46 PM] 10,000 residents to one site in Austin to support that vision, where would it be? This is undeniably the most important question of the three. So if we look at it, it's there's a site directly located next to the two major job centers in the city. That is, you can go back. Well, you can stay there. That's fine. You can. So the university of Texas is just north of the lantana site, and the capitol complex that extends from 15th to 19th, where the state is putting up all of those beautiful new buildings. This is also the only residential site that's adjacent to the capitol complex. It's also the single closest site to two of Austin's three most heavily trafficked traffic museums. And it's the only private property. [1:06:48 PM] >> Thank you for speaking with us, and I appreciate getting to attend the mobility jeopardy in person at some point at a local establishment. >> Up next, we're going to have o'brien James or sorry, James o'brien. >> Greetings. James. My friends call me Santiago. I am here today. Kind of that presentation up. Theoretically. This is in your email as well. I'd like to talk about community preferred alternatives, which is part of chapter 26, Texas state code. And it is with regard to festival beach food forest, which most of you have probably heard something about. Last council, there was an approval of $17 million to be allocated to the parks and rec department for acquisition of new parkland within two miles of the impacted mitigation sites for [1:07:49 PM] the reconstruction of I-35 at the Colorado river. My concern today is the disruption of a current use of parkland, which is, over the past five years, development of a contract with the city of Austin parks department to have a community volunteer led organization steward this parkland and part of the phase two expansion was to implement urban forestry grant funds and develop this parkland. The green line that is going through that parkland is a four foot diameter wastewater pipeline that will be abandoned at the end of this project. The purple line that's at the top is my preferred alternative, and the community's preferred alternative to you can see this sort of like dashed line that is intersecting both of those [1:08:49 PM] angles to the top right corner. That's the four foot wastewater pipeline. If. If we go to the next slide, please, my recommendation is to use part of that mitigation funds to do a process called a road vacation. And speaking with city staff, it's possible to go through the real estate office and to go through a council resolution to abandon these two roads, which have been closed since September and will be continued to be closed for an Austin energy transmission tower that's going in and continued construction. All those maroon lines are roads that are currently closed. If those two blocks were parkland, then a easement utility easement could be done. And if we went back to that previous slide, that purple line could then be a viable, feasible option. And so I'm here to [1:09:50 PM] request a mobility study essentially to see what the potential impacts for multimodal local traffic and ultimately keeping interstate traffic on the highway and not in our parklands to to for latent latent costs for the city. Thank you for your time. >> Thank you for coming to speak with us. I'll look further into the communication that you sent us, but we've been in contact with a couple of folks with the with the food forest and really want to make sure that we're looking at all these impacts. And it's a high profile topic right now. So we appreciate you bringing that to our attention. >> Thank you. >> Up next we have Angelina Alanis. >> Hello I'm Angelina Alanis. I'm also here with the food forest project. We've heard from a lot of people that because this has already passed through the board and the council approval that it needed to do, it's kind of in txdot hands and there's nothing that the city can do at this point. And I've heard that, and I think Santiago and I just [1:10:51 PM] wanted to make sure that we're pushing as hard as we can. And that's really the truth. Before we let this piece of parkland get destroyed. It's my understanding that this Austin water pipe line proposal was drafted in order to save several historic old growth trees. Those trees have already been removed and killed by txdot. I am under the understanding that this pipeline was proposed to protect some, like city utility like lighting for community safety reasons. That lighting has already been taken down as a result of the construction for this project. And so it's pretty obvious that txdot wasn't totally forthcoming with all the impacts we would feel from their construction. And so we're curious, given these unforeseen impacts, if there's another route that wasn't explored. It also looks like from the publicly available information that we've seen, that truly not all possible alternatives were considered when looking at this pipeline, because the engineers were operating from the framework that this wasn't used. Parkland. When that wasn't the case, the engineer directly lied to a board member and told Nicole [1:11:51 PM] Merritt on parks and recs board that food forest would not be impacted by this project either. That was a lie or just like an egregious error. But we'd already been planting and stewarding and caring for the soil in that land. And so I'm really concerned that a board member advocated for this project and like, sent the recommendation to council with false information. And so we just want to make sure that if there are other alternatives, they are explored, even if that means delaying a month or two to make sure that those are addressed. So yeah, thank you. >> Thank you. >> That's everyone. >> Thanks, Danielle. We'll move into our item number one approval of the minutes from the January 15th, 2026 mobility committee meeting. Motion is made by vice chair qadri, seconded by mayor pro tem vela. All in favor, say aye. All right. That is all of us. All four of us in attendance today. Item number two is a briefing about the urban transportation [1:12:51 PM] commission regarding actions from February 3rd meeting. >> Hello, council members, I'm Natalie Leone, I'm a business process consultant for Austin transportation and public works. I also serve as the staff liaison to the urban transportation commission. On February 3rd, we had three action items move through. First was a recommendation regarding sixth street design options, including suggestions for other downtown streets based on the staff recommendation. The second was a recommendation to ct or for ct, mri, ct mopac south project, which supported previous resolutions passed by city council, as well as letters sent to ct by council members, and the third was establishment of a working group to create a fiscal year 27 recommendation [1:13:52 PM] on the budget, and you should be able to expect that recommendation from the March 3rd meeting. >> Okay, we appreciate that. My office also was able to recently have. A circle up meeting with ctma about mopac south and trying to look at kind of where they are in their planning stages. What dates can people expect to see more information and how to best engage with that process? And so I'm glad to see that the utc has been taking this up as well. I think vice chair qadri may have a question. >> A quick question on that last recommendation that you listed out. Is that a recommendation for bond recommended projects? >> So this would be a budget recommendation that they expect to pass in March. >> Thank you. >> No problem. >> All right. Any further questions for Natalie? If not, we will move on to item number three, which is the briefing on urban trails and sidewalks program updates, gaps and funding needs. We have John Eastman joining us. I [1:14:53 PM] appreciate your patience. I think we had this on December and then had to postpone it because our discussion got so beefy and so informative that we ended up running out of time. So we appreciate you being able to revisit this with us today. >> Absolutely. And pleasure to be here. Pleasure to talk about the work of sidewalks and trails division. Good afternoon, council members. So we're going to go pretty high level. There's a lot of work going on. So my name is John Eastman. I'm the division manager for sidewalks and urban trails within the Austin transportation public works. I'm lucky enough to get to work with this great team. It was a lot of fun at the wishbone bridge opening to hear all the appreciation for staff. There's a lot of people who work on wishbone bridge in that picture, and we're going to focus mainly on the work of the sidewalk program, urban trails, the things that are getting built. But I did want to include a slide that kind of provided an overview of the scope of the work that that team does. So start in on the sidewalk [1:15:56 PM] program. Over the last 20 years, the city of Austin has just made tremendous progress in building out its sidewalk network. We've gone from less than 50% of the sidewalk network to just slightly over 80%. Now, I checked the numbers this morning. We're actually up to 2909 miles of sidewalk in the city. And, you know, a lot, a lot of great work done, but still almost just over seven. Actually, it's down to 690 something miles of sidewalks. So we've got almost 700 miles of gaps in the system. Still, the network itself, the quality of that network has improved tremendously. We've got we're now at about 40% classified as functionally acceptable. Doesn't necessarily sound great, but when you think about that, it was at 16% just ten years ago. Really tremendous progress. And a lot of that progress is due to the ongoing public awareness campaigns and the [1:16:57 PM] work of our urban forestry group, and doing proactive notifications and landowner engagements relative to vegetation obstruction. So half the improvements that we've seen in the network aren't from building sidewalks. It's from getting consistent vegetation maintenance. We're literally getting down in the weeds. It's making a difference. And it really is an ongoing issue. If we could get the rest of the 200 miles or so of vegetation that are regularly a problem cleared on a, we'd be getting close to our 2033 goal of a 50% functionally acceptable network. Next couple of slides. Next few slides are actually just. I thought it was be an opportunity to to really take a step back, take a big picture view of the network. So on the right the slides are going to be the same. It's the city street network. You know, the city street network you can get from any place in the city to any other place in the city, very effectively the sidewalk [1:17:57 PM] network and by comparison, on the left, not quite so robust. And clearly some challenges in terms of getting a complete network yard in our shared streets. And it starts to look pretty good. And at almost 80% complete, it is getting much better. But if you add in in a in a high contrast color, this is all the planned sidewalks. So those pink lines on the left now are that almost 700 miles in gaps. You can see there's still really a significant amount of work to do to ensure that that folks who take transit and walk as their primary mode of transportation have the same access and opportunities to the city as those who are driving. So the work goes every day. We got almost 20 crews out there working every day. This is a real typical project. Ainsworth's street, just south of oh, down by Stacy and connecting up a neighborhood. There was a street with without sidewalks on both sides, just extending the sidewalk down. It connects to south congress, and [1:18:59 PM] it's within a quarter mile of a metro rapid station. So a lot of work like that going on. This is a project, Coronado hills, that really showcases a coordinated approach that projects in construction will be wrapping up here in the next couple of months. It includes sidewalks, crossings and shared streets. All the things we talk about in our plan in order to create a comprehensive pedestrian environment that feels safe, that's context sensitive. It includes gateway treatments. We we took a lot of time kind of honing the design on how to go from a sidewalk environment to a shared street environment. We think we've got something that really works and was embraced by the neighborhood. We have some really dramatic intersection improvements at Coronado hills and creekside drive, where this is what it used to look like. This was a design that was after multiple rounds of engagement with the [1:19:59 PM] neighborhood. This is the final design that was developed, and it reduces what was over a 200 foot crossing in an area of conflict where where pedestrians and vehicles could be in conflict down to something. Now it's almost built where there's less than 40ft of conflict area there now, rather than these, you know, kind of oblique angle turns, much safer crossings, very clear pedestrian paths. And what's really fun is we've reduced the impervious cover in this area and created an area where we can plant some trees in that corner in the center of the picture. That's going to be a final phase of this project, wraps up later this spring for the sidewalk program. For those who are interested where the work's going, this is a link to our website. It's always up to date. It's got a 3380 day kind of look ahead so you can see the work that's ongoing and the work that's coming on sidewalks. So budget this is inclusive of both the capital budget, the new sidewalk budget and the [1:21:00 PM] rehab work we do that's that's funded through the transportation user fee primarily some high points like the rest of the local mobility programs, the 2016 2018 bond programs are complete. The 2020 the sidewalk portion, the 2020 bond will be wrapping up this year, almost two years ahead of schedule, thanks to the special $10 billion allocation by council for fy 26. We're going to be operating it, you know, closer to the level as we have been the last few years. The graph on the right shows you the funding, the current and projected funding relative to the goals in the sidewalks, crossings and shared streets plan, and then moving on to urban trails. So very exciting that we completed our first comprehensive condition assessment of the entire urban trail network. And happy to report that the overall, the [1:22:01 PM] urban trail network is newer and is in better condition than our sidewalk network, only about 10% in need of major repair or replacement. A lot of that is thanks to our nonprofit partners that maintain a lot of that network, as well as Austin parks and recreation. A lot of the urban trails go through parkland are maintained. By April, some recently completed projects for for those who haven't been in zilker park or out near the monon trail, there's some really nice stuff that's been coming online thanks to those investments through the bond program. One of my favorites. And again, this is this has been complete for a little while now, but I think it really showcases how we are using urban trails. This is shared use path along Barton springs road which connects to the entrance of zilker botanical gardens. The pedestrian hybrid beacon was funded through transit enhancement program. We worked with capmetro to make a great connection. The bus stops, you [1:23:01 PM] know, year and a half ago, two years ago, when before we started this project, that bus stop you see on the right was literally a pole planted in a ditch that on a rainy day you were standing in in an ankle deep puddle to catch a bus. And it really transformative set of improvements have been really embraced under construction starting soon. And as mentioned this, I put this presentation together originally in December. We hadn't finished the wishbone bridge that's finished. It's been embraced. It was really gratifying to see the level of spark just absolutely shocking that the turnout for that, a lot of other projects already in construction. Mok Ann trail, shoal creek at 2222. That underpass is about to go into construction. So a lot of fun projects happening that are going to improve connectivity of our trail network. One of the really signature projects that was highlighted in the 2023 update to the urban trails [1:24:02 PM] plan is the big loop. For those who haven't heard about it. It's a 30 mile connected network around our urban trails, kind of from central downtown Austin all the way up through north Austin includes multiple trails, making great progress as two sections of that that are under construction right now. The portion of the Mok Ann trail, the bridge over boggy creek, is going to be going in this summer. That's going to knit together that southern portion of this trail, and up at the north end, there's work going on in Neil Thompson longhorn extending the shoal creek trail. That's going to tie into the work that's being done by our capital delivery services department along burnet road, tying into the Q2 trail. So a lot of great work in what's going to be, frankly, a new iconic trail system or, you know, a way to see Austin and experience Austin in the next few years. Similar to [1:25:03 PM] sidewalks, we've got an interactive it's a little bit more of a story map because urban trails, you know, they're they're a little more complex projects. So we've got a map that provides, you know, a status of the development of everything that's being worked on. And there's a couple of really big lines. And you'll see when we talk about the budget, that sort of north south line is the Bergstrom spur trail. And you know, we're looking forward to bringing that to bid and into construction here this year. This is the overall budget for urban trails. It's really a capital budget primarily. And so out of all the remaining bond funds, big picture, there's about $15 million of the 56, $57 million that are available that are currently in construction, and those funds will be expended here shortly. There's another $33 million with projects that are just about to go to bid and go into [1:26:06 PM] construction. Multiple sections of the Bergstrom spur trail. There's a section along metrocenter drive that's slated to start construction here in March. We've got some federal grant commitments and some engineering and design work, and that kind of accounts for the outstanding budget that's available. So here within the next year, year and a half, all those within this year, virtually all those funds will be encumbered. And within two years, pretty much all of them spent except some of the federal match stuff. Some of the highlights and initiatives, as I mentioned, making great progress on the bond programs. Really excited about the new dedicated urban trail maintenance crew that was approved with the fy 26 budget. That's going to help us keep the trail system in a good condition, making real progress on updating our processes in order to get to a faster trail construction, some new [1:27:06 PM] materials and construction. That picture is actually the Caesar, the extension, the Cesar Chavez shared use path. It's a product called flex. City arborist allowed us, endorsed it and worked with Austin parks and rec. That little connection there. It's it's pretty unassuming, but we saved over $400,000 by not having to go around those big heritage trees and build giant retaining walls, and frankly, probably would have impacted them in in ways that would have been detrimental to them. And so really exploring new products got some initiatives in terms of wayfinding coming up, urban trail stewards, and in wrapping up the the work of the urban trail stakeholder group, got some code and criteria updates that we're going to are going to be coming forward over the next year or so, both for new development and maintenance that are going to help in the delivery of both sidewalks and urban trails. And with that, happy to take [1:28:07 PM] questions. >> Wu. That's a lot of good information. Love it. I have one question to kick us off the timeline for the Bergstrom spur trail. I know that that had been in the works for planning, and we wanted to make sure that we knew all the dollars were Teed up to be able to do that. What does the rfp process look like? What is the timeline for that, or is that already out and bidded and ready to go? >> So there's actually three different phases to Bergstrom spur. And in fact they've been kind of the exact extent of each of the the sections has changed a little bit. So on the far west and there's a section in Vincent drive that that was in the right of way that was already constructed. And we had a nice ribbon cutting for that. The section, the next section is actually funded through community project funds from congressman Doggett. And so [1:29:09 PM] that's got a certain, you know, federal bidding process that's getting close to 100%. We have to get the plans approved by txdot because they're administering that grant that should be going to bid. That's when the project's going to bid this year. I think it'll be sometime this late summer, early fall. That one goes to bid. That'll get from Vincent. Drive over to congress and yeah, over to congress. And then there's a big central section from congress all the way over to montopolis, where we've actually taken a couple pieces together, taking out the I-35 crossing, which is going to be built by txdot as part of their project, funded through $500,000 provided by congressman Casar as a as an earmark. But the rest of that, Bergstrom is, thanks to some, some process changes. We'll be getting that out to bid here. I don't want to, you know, over promise, I'd say early summer, but that's that's several miles [1:30:09 PM] of trail that's going to be a major project going to bid. And then the final piece at the far east end of the project on metro center, there's another section that was similar to Vincent drive that's in existing right of way. We can use an existing one of our idiq contracts that we use for our sidewalk program. It's going to be a lot of fun, because it's going to be very similar to what you saw at that intersection where we're going to repave. There was a really a lot of right of way, a lot of asphalt. We're going to be reallocating street space, creating a green buffer, creating almost like a boulevard effect. And that's going to go to construction sometime late March. So three different pieces, one going to construction here this spring, the another going to bid early summer, another going to bid, you know, later, later this summer or early fall. So a lot of stuff happening on Bergstrom spur. >> That's fantastic to hear I know we certainly appreciate appreciate our congressman [1:31:09 PM] going to bat for us at the federal level. We just had a fantastic ribbon cutting of the wishbone bridge, which is a really, really important mobility project on town lake that we're happy to see come to fruition. But we can't do this work alone, and we need to make sure that we continue to earn the support of our congress people moving forward, because they've been both of them have been super helpful in trying to get our limited city dollars to actually get these projects across the finish line. >> Absolutely. And I really do have to thank capitol delivery services Wright their project manager, Lori, tearing for the wishbone bridge. You know, we were the sponsor in that project, but that was a big standalone. We did a lot to assist capital delivery services, you know, really delivered that project. They're also taking that really big portion of the Bergstrom spur I talked about there. You know we partner with them and they lead the way on those big complex projects for us. >> And we've been appreciative that the urban trails planning over the lifetime that I've [1:32:10 PM] been here, and the tenure is like the one that can kind of churn things out quickly because they're a more limited footprint and they're going through environmentally sensitive areas. But y'all have always found a way to keep projects moving, and we certainly appreciate that. I know there's probably a couple of questions from committee members. Vice chair qadri. >> I just had one question on sidewalks, sorry. And I'm also very much fascinated with this. But also the tele driving thing is, is interesting when it comes to funding options for the sidewalks. What are some moving forward? >> You know, there's if you looked at that slide, there are. And you know, I'm going to let director Mendoza, you know, interrupt me if I say something out of turn primarily. So for sidewalk rehabilitation that's funded transportation user fee. There's approximately just under $8 million. That's now and that's in a gradual increase. When I started with the program, we were at [1:33:12 PM] $250,000 a year to 2400 mile network. That's gradually been increasing. So that's one funding source for rehab, for new sidewalks. It's been primarily bonds because those are that's new capital infrastructure. There are some other funding sources. We're working closely with our parking transportation management districts. And so that's a great partnership where there's targeted funds within that. Those funds generated by that district and build sidewalks within that district. And so that's been real successful. We're seeing opportunities there. We also have some sidewalk fee in lieu funds. But the primary funding source for new sidewalks has been bonds. >> Thank you. >> Mayor pro tem vela. And then I'll call on councilmember harper-madison after that. >> All right. >> Thank you for the presentation and really glad to hear the the success. And if there's a more popular program [1:34:13 PM] in Austin than the sidewalk program, I'm not sure what it is. The the general permit. Can you talk a little bit about that and how it's helped? What is it? >> Yeah, certainly. So, you know, we could spend we spend an hour general permits go all the way back. I mean, tracks all the way up to the clean water act, the clean air act, and the implementation of those is pushed down to the state, and the state pushes down to municipalities. And so municipalities have to have a mechanism to make sure that the projects. And it really gets to to the issue of non-point source pollution. So we have a construction project that opens up large areas. You got to make sure that proper steps are taken to ensure that we're not going to have erosion when a storm event comes through, or a high wind event also gets to the implementation of the city's environmental standards. Right. We're very cautious and careful about how we work around trees and critical water [1:35:13 PM] quality Zones. So the general permit provides a mechanism for certain types of projects, utility projects, right of way projects to actually self-certify they're required to follow all the same standards, follow all the same rules. But they have a particularly for city right of way projects, a different risk profile insofar as, you know, it's it's a project that's happening on city city land. And if there are any issues identified, the city has control over addressing those issues. And so can can issue a permit through a kind of a self- certification process. And that that has changed. Dsd has done a lot of work. So it's really, you know, credit to to development services, the work they've done in terms of reorganizing how that general permit system works. >> Great. And so basically, city project managers are familiar with city rules, are working on city property. They're just kind of [1:36:13 PM] understanding of what the proper procedures are. And I guess the idea is that the general permit expedites the approval process. So we can go from kind of design to construction as soon as. I mean, is that all? >> Yeah, absolutely. And also good to point out that, you know, utilities, franchise utilities, you know, also are subject to that general permit process. So they get to work under that same regime. >> Great. And again, as opposed to kind of a third party, you know, a private party that on private land it's a totally different kind of relationship and a totally different kind of set of concerns. I'm happy to see that. I'm a supporter of the general permit. I know we've talked to to parks about, you know, potentially expanding that and it because it sure helps get city projects done. And that's what we're trying to ultimately do. The I'm looking at 18 slide 18 of your presentation. And I know it looks like you still do have $10 million of new sidewalk capital money to work with, but [1:37:15 PM] that after this fiscal year, then, I mean, that $10 million is half of what you managed to spend and build basically last year. Is that correct? >> Yeah. Overall. And again, we're we're trying to really maximize the opportunities for, you know, those parking transportation management districts fee and fee and Lou. So we might get a little bit more construction than we're showing there if we can front load those. But you know, maybe two thirds. And our five year average now you know the 2020 bond was, you know frankly a generational investment. But we were building sidewalks at the rate of $30 million a year. >> I mean, and I appreciate that because that's what you that's what we can do if we if we put the resources there, it would I mean, would you think of that as kind of I don't want to say a ceiling obviously. You know, but but you know, we can only do so much. Right? I mean, there's only so many people in so many. [1:38:15 PM] >> Yeah. And it's very much and I think there's been a great understanding through the, you know, the bond development task force of, you know, certain things are, are signature standalone projects that, like the wishbone bridge. And then there are programmatic approaches and certain infrastructure really lends itself to a programmatic approach. Vision zero bikeways, sidewalks all fall into that transit enhancement fall into that programmatic approach. We peaked in 2024, delivered $45 million worth of improvements. We we could not run at that rate. That was we were going to break, but we were trying to get that that bond delivered. I'd say where we were at last year, that 25 to $30 million range is with the current staffing. We're we're well resourced to to produce at that rate. >> That's good to know because I'd like to to to keep you busy and your crew are busy on, on the sidewalk stuff and last [1:39:16 PM] question bikeways and urban trails. What's the difference between bikeways and urban trails? >> So, you know, that's a really good question. There's actually a section in the urban trails plan that says, what is an urban trail? And and frankly, sometimes it is a bikeway next to a sidewalk. So. A bikeway is always an in street facility. It's generally a protected facility where, you know, in order for most, if not all users to feel comfortable in it, we need to have some sort of physical separation. Shoal creek bikeway is a really good example within the overall city active transportation plans. And when we did atx walk bike roll, we updated, you know, the sidewalks, crossing shared streets plan, the bicycle plan, the urban trails plan together. Some bikeways also are portions of the urban trail network. So [1:40:17 PM] shoal creek trail is really good example primarily for an urban trail. The goal is to have it in a more natural setting, to have it through parkland or something that feels like parkland, feel like you're connecting to nature, but it also serves a transportation. It has transportation, you know, utility to it. There are portions of in trying to create a route that will get you across the city, where there's just not parkland, there's not the opportunity. And so some of our urban trails, portions of them are essentially sidewalk next to a protected bikeway. And the shoal creek trail is a really great example of that, up to about 38. That's mostly parkland north of 38th, all the way up to 183. It's mostly a bikeway sidewalk, but then it gets back into an area that feels a little more natural. So to some degree, it's really about creating a network that [1:41:17 PM] provides, you know, pathways through the city that that makes some a subset of bikeways become part of the urban trail network. >> All right. Well. >> Thank you for the presentation, Mr. Eastman, and for all your work and appreciate it. Thank you. Chair. >> Thanks. >> Let's go to council member harper-madison. >> Thank you chair, I appreciate it. And I'll echo mayor pro tem vela and thank him for the presentation. I think I sense a theme here by way of council member qadri and mayor pro tem Valdez questions because mine are also related to. Excuse me. Sidewalks. It's the thing that I hear about the most. And to council member qadri point about funding. So you know, I've been thinking a lot about our discussions and commentary and presentations from our constituents during the course of the budget process and every conversation since about money. And I can't help but wonder. I mean, to [1:42:18 PM] your point, you said the thing that I didn't want to hear you say when he asked the question about financing mechanisms, you said bonds. My fear there is if bonds are the only way, then there are a lot of sidewalks that aren't going to get built. You guys can only do so much, you know. And so my question then is for alternative financing mechanisms for the future, you know, and the worst case scenario that we don't pass a bond that contributes to all of these infrastructure needs, that we have mobility infrastructure needs. I'm happy to see a lot of these on the list, Mok Ann included. But we need so many sidewalks and that has to get funded somehow. But if we don't pass a bond for these sidewalks. >> You know, as I said, I think we're making tremendous progress on because it's not just, you know, addressing the gaps in the the network. It just doesn't do you any good. If the existing networks are not in good condition. And so there's been real work on the [1:43:18 PM] transportation user fee. And I think that's a success story. It's possible to lean into that. There are a lot of calls for the transportation user fee in terms of financing. I, I do have to defer that question. My primary responsibility is to lead the team that delivers on the resources, the financing questions. They're they're challenging. I don't have any magic. I see director Mendoza coming up. And so we could sort of feel me going, hey, Richard, can you come on over? So I'm going to I'm going to defer to him on that question. >> Certainly. Thank you. Councilmember. >> I don't I don't anticipate. >> Any magic responses. I was thinking more along the lines of I myself personally, part of my thought is how am I going to prepare the district one constituent base and their new council member in November or December? What what are we leaving from a succession perspective for them to address [1:44:19 PM] comprehensive connectivity in our mobility system? And to your point, you know, if the infrastructure you don't want to build on shoddy infrastructure and I completely understand, you know, the level of integrity that goes behind having a good start, a solid start. But my question, I think, sort of is, is do we have an opportunity to, as this body, of course, under the leadership of our chair, but the larger body to have conversations about alternative financing mechanisms for these things that can't I mean, you know, it's always sad when our programmatic efforts go so heartbreaking. But these things that you know, are aren't negotiable. >> Thank you for that. That input, councilmember. And you know, it is going to be incumbent on us to get creative going forward on how we are going to resource this much needed need in our community. We're making tremendous [1:45:19 PM] advances in investments like in public transit. Well, you've got to get folks safely from their doorsteps and comfortably to those transit stops. It's even more important to do that in areas of affordable housing where people need affordable means for transportation access, jobs and education. So there's a number of things that we can that we can explore going forward. Grant funding is one of them. You know, of course, being very not selective but aware of where critical needs for mobility, active mobility infrastructure are in our communities to affect, you know, economic mobility, advancement for our community. And so we'll continue to explore those either grants, application of of different fees, both the tough and future bonds. >> Thank you I appreciate it. And my hope is that, you know, over the course of the coming months that, you know, [1:46:20 PM] collectively, we we are able to discover other opportunities for for funding critical infrastructure projects. Thank you both. Appreciate it. Thank you chair. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. I know the conversation of how and when to allocate resources is always something that the city council is considering. And I remember, I think the 10 million that mayor pro tem vela had mentioned for 2026 is probably out of the c-o bonds that council member Laine had earmarked. Is that is that correct? Am I remembering that? >> You're correct. >> Okay. Yeah. And so there's always the conversation of new miles versus maintenance miles. And so I know that we try to make our general fund as much as possible, help with maintenance, cost of service studies for any of the fees to make sure that we are appropriately using those for cost of service is really important. But that big question of how much goes to new stuff and then what is then the absorbed financial [1:47:22 PM] commitment of maintaining the infrastructure that's there. So I know that's a really big conversation that we have every budget cycle. I don't know if you have anything to add to that or if you've covered it. >> No. Council councilmember, I'm just I'm just pleased that as a body, we're recognizing that the cost for our infrastructure doesn't just stop when we build new stuff. There's a full life cycle that is going to be required of that investment to maintain and operate and do it effectively so that we can realize the full life of those assets going forward. >> Right? Right. I know some of the questions we get in southwest Austin are particularly around rehabbing sidewalks that have gone haywire, for lack of a better term. And a lot of the neighborhoods that I represent actually were built by a private developer in the 80s or 90s. And then when they became part of the city, now the city is on the hook for maintaining them, and a lot of them have growing TRE roots or other sorts of erosion issues. So we're constantly trying to [1:48:22 PM] balance how how many dollars are available with the need. But there's there's a lot of stuff the city's been put on the hook for all these decades later that we didn't necessarily build and aren't up to the standards that we currently hold for things that we would build new. I have a question about the vegetation. What is the best plan of action, or how do users engage with the city around vegetation obstructions? If someone's on a bike, in a bike Laine and they see that there's there's trees or brush growing over or something happening in that Laine, does it go to three, one, one? How do people let y'all know that there's something that needs attention? >> You know, I, I think there's a couple avenues. Yeah, absolutely. 311i would just and I was really looking forward to this and making sure that we talked about this in the slideshow is, you know, if it's something in your neighborhood, you know, the neighbor, not everybody's comfortable talking to them. Talk to your neighbor. Just tell people, you know, this is the number one issue [1:49:24 PM] related to the functionality of our sidewalk and to some degree, our bikeways network. And just talk to the people you know about doing that work. Yeah, obviously, if it's somebody you don't know or don't feel comfortable having that conversation with, it's it's call 311. And it is a very standard. And there's an avenue and I would say coming out of the 2016 sidewalk plan update, we had identified that our urban forestry group is really working proactively. We use our prioritization model to then have them go out and proactively reach out to folks. But yeah, 311 primary route. >> That's good to know. I know there's a handful of folks we've engaged with that. As people get older, it's harder for them to maintain the brush that may be hanging over a sidewalk or whatnot. And oftentimes, a friendly neighbor offering to help may solve an issue rather than having code department show up. And, you know, going through all that issue is just show up to folks and, you know, ask, ask if they [1:50:24 PM] need help or things like that for for these situations, because it is important for traffic safety to make sure people can use these other modes. The last thing I'll say on the on the topic of funding, you know, I appreciate you highlighting the botanical garden shared use path. I know that was one of the first projects that we had earmarked. It was out of the funds. And so that's a unique story where it's not coming out of voter approved bonds necessarily. But at some point before my time, the city council had allowed capmetro to increase sales tax in a certain way, to be able to expand infrastructure for public transportation, but then ended up not utilizing it all. And so we were able to earmark every single council office, got some money to be able to put toward non-car mobility projects. And I, I don't know that we're going to do sales tax anytime soon, but love the idea of getting creative about how these dollars are used. And the botanical garden conservancy has been a great help in that area, and we're certainly happy to see that [1:51:26 PM] shared use pathway finally up and running. >> And I do have to thank you. That was I know you worked closely with Shelley Kilday on our team. >> Yes. >> And that was very catalytic funding to sort of bring that whole project together. And I thought that was a really great example of, of, of pulling multiple funding sources a little bit. You know, there's urban trail funding in there, transit enhancement quarter funding. Also parks and recreation kind of dug through, you know, where they could. And they helped us do the upgrades to those really beautiful railings on the corner there, as well as taking on all the installation on on all the landscaping. And so yeah, very neat project. One other source, just to let you know that we are looking at everything possible is the street impact fees. You know it. They can only be used to increase vehicular capacity. I mean that's you know, state law, but it does allow for a comprehensive project. So when you're upgrading a roadway, you [1:52:27 PM] get to upgrade everything. So you do the projects that increase vehicular capacity. A lot of times that's, you know, signal work, turn Laine improvements, things that increase the capacity. You can then at that point also use that that funding to put in the sidewalks, bikeway infrastructure. And so we are using that. There was some work on east acre Laine. And when you you're creative about how how it's put together that that's a source. It's not a lot. But we are working internally to identify every possible funding source. >> While the infrastructure is certainly appreciated, and there's folks that if you would have asked them ten years ago, would you think of riding a bike in this area? They would have said, absolutely not. And now I have neighborhoods coming to me and saying, hey, can we get one of those cool new shared use pathways? Because there's one really close. We just can't connect into it and we would love to do that. So I'll just end the conversation by saying, we appreciate the work you're doing. I think there's a lot of people that want to put as much money toward the program as possible, knowing that there's only so [1:53:28 PM] much time and capacity to be able to deliver the projects, but we're always going to push the envelope and try to try to keep you all moving. All right. >> Thank you so much. Appreciate your time. >> Thanks. If there's no other questions, that'll move us to item four. The briefing on operation of tele driving vehicles, which operate remotely through an internet connection, and possible future parameters of use of such vehicles. This is. Something I don't know that we're necessarily saying we love the idea yet, but we just need to know what we're what we're up against and what is on the horizon for this. This new technology. >> Thank you. Chair. I'm Louis Leff, assistant director with Austin transportation public works. I'm presenting today with Rachel castagnoli, who's with atp's as well. Austin has been and continues to be a destination for new mobility related technologies. As you recall, chapter three of the asmp, the strategic mobility [1:54:28 PM] plan for Austin includes a section on emerging mobility solutions, how we've learned about and how we evaluate new solutions, and how we partner with public and private entities to maximize the benefit of those solutions and those new innovative technologies to meet our community's mobility goals. So we're excited to be here today to be talking about the opportunity to proactively engage on tele driving. It's been in some use to some degree within our community already, and we anticipate it will be more widely utilized this year. And so Rachel's going to cover some of the key differences of tele driving with autonomous vehicles to make sure that we start with a shared understanding of the differences there, where this is happening now, and what Texas state law covers and doesn't cover. And I'll talk about what our proposed approach is from here. So I'm going to turn it over to Rachel. >> Thank you. Mobility committee. So tele driving is a continuous real time driving of a vehicle by a remote human driver using the cellular network. So the driver is in a specialized unit. They're [1:55:29 PM] having live video feed as well as sound coming to them through the network. And then the vehicle is operating in the right of way, controlled by that remote driver. There are currently tele driving operations, mostly in Las Vegas, Nevada. Nevada law preempts cities and counties from creating any tele driving rules, much like our state preempts us from autonomous vehicle rules. But we have been meeting with our counterparts in Las Vegas and Clark county to discuss what their experience has been with tele driving. Their tele driving has been part of a car share service. There also is some tele driving in the west Texas oil fields on private roads, those being large trucks being tele driven. There are no laws regarding tele driving in Texas right now. We did bring this up when we worked with the legislature on the av law during the last session. They declined to kind of create any rules around it, but tele [1:56:31 PM] driving is not autonomous vehicles because the vehicle is not being driven by a software, it's being driven by a human being. You can give that human being a ticket. That human being can be cited. So this doesn't fall into Texas transportation code 545, subchapter J, which is the autonomous vehicle. Subchapter tele driving. We can, you know, make rules around it in the city of Austin. It's not automated. Just an update on where we are with avs. And in fact, this morning the DMV had a hearing finalizing the rules about their av permitting program during the 89th legislative session. They did pass some new rules requiring permits, and the Texas DMV can suspend, revoke, or cancel the permits for autonomous vehicles. We work really closely with the Texas DMV, txdot, and Texas dps on all of the av things happening in the city, as well as challenges. It also requires a first responder plan, which Texas dps is in charge of, and [1:57:32 PM] that will outline kind of how to communicate with the autonomous vehicle, how to safely move it from the road, and how to recognize whether it's an autonomous mode or not. And I'll pass it back to Luis. >> So atp has been engaged with a company that's stated intention to begin operations tele operations in the coming months. So we're working towards an agreement with that company, just basic standards of operations and what kind of information would be provided. The reason we're taking this approach is because we have this opportunity with a willing partner on the private sector to be able to discuss and and understand what that operations will look like prior to moving towards a stage of actually regulating on that, on that level. And so it's likely that we would be bringing forward an ordinance at a later date to allow the director to create rules around tele driving, which would really just be modeled and aligned with what the state's currently doing around autonomous vehicles, making sure that we've got certain elements, including first responder plans and how we engage with incidents on the [1:58:34 PM] roadways. It would the rules would likely start with operating license and permits to be able to operate. It would give us a better understanding of what's kind of the service area, the operations area that they would be operating in and what the size of their fleet would be, any expansions to that fleet as well. Some of the things that the rules would likely cover, which some of the mou points would also cover, would be safety reports on incidents again where they are operating or not based on conditions this might reflect when they're not able to be safely operated based on the speeds of the roadway, or constantly demonstrating any kind of incidents that we can't kind of get a handle on through the agreement itself. And so a key part that we've engaged with, working through the working group on avs over the years, making sure our public safety responders understand how to engage with the vehicles when they're in the field, and how do we talk with the company themselves to resolve the issue quickly. So it's not detracting from the public safety response that's needed for that event or that incident. And so again, really trying to start with [1:59:35 PM] this mou, this memorandum of understanding of what the operations would look like, what we expect from them, anything that they might expect from us, and then moving forward towards more of a regulatory element in the future if it's needed. So that is what we have for you today. You know, the next steps really look like in the coming months. We anticipate finalizing that agreement with the company and then moving towards the spring and summer. If they begin that rollout, monitoring the operations, coordinating with the other local state agencies, again, modeled very much on their our approach with avs to date. And then looking in the summer or fall, depending on how it all plays out over the summer, potentially bringing that ordinance to council to allow for the director to create those director's rules that would be more of a license and permit system for that, or any other company that would be operating around tele driving operations in Austin. Look forward to questions and conversation. >> Got one from vice chair qadri. >> I have a few questions and I don't know if you can answer [2:00:36 PM] the first one. What companies looking to set up shop in Austin? >> Yes, just because we're in the early stages of kind of an agreement and working through that, we don't want to jeopardize any competitive issues or any proprietary information. So right now, I think we're going to stick to the general information that's been provided, and we'll be glad to update council directly as this progresses in the coming weeks. >> Got it. And then when the self-driving cars we're looking to set up shop, they would always say, you know, it's safer than a human driver. Well, this is a human driver. So do we have any data, I guess, out of Las Vegas on just like, you know, safety metrics? >> My understanding is that they are tracking that. Obviously the company is just as interested as the public is on that. My understanding, there's been, I think, 1 or 2 incidents where there's been a crash related to the driving of that operation, but beyond that, we don't have any additional data unless you have any additional reporting or analysis that you've seen. >> No. But in Las Vegas, they travel at a max 26mph. So there haven't been any serious [2:01:38 PM] crashes. >> So the cars don't. It's not like someone can. And also where the drivers are, they like sitting at home. Is there like a a warehouse. They're all kind of housed out of and they're I don't know, they're eating popcorn while they're, while they're driving this car, like where do they. >> Get in office and that office. >> They're in an office, okay. >> Multiple internet connected to it as well as backup power and things like that. >> Sure. But you said 26mph is the fastest. These these tele driving cars go. >> That is currently in las Vegas. >> Correct. Got it, got it. Yeah. My other question, which I already kind of said it was, you know, what does it look like where, you know, can someone work from home. Right. I assume the answer is no. And I would also think they would do some sort of testing or not testing. But when someone comes in for work, they're not hungover. And then they're like, now have this car that they're driving, right? So anyway, those are my questions. Thank you. >> I think mayor pro tem vela [2:02:39 PM] has a question. >> So this would be the same as autonomous vehicle approach. In other words, I guess I'm just trying to think of like why the tele driving versus the av? I'm not quite understanding, you know, what the what the benefits and and you know, trade offs are between those two modes. Could you just kind. >> Of we could speak to the the model that's in Las Vegas currently. It's a car share operation. And so they are using the tele driving between rented vehicle trips. And so to get the vehicle from one customer to the next they can use the tele driving to do that. And so it's not a rideshare operation. It is not like some of the autonomous vehicle uses that we've seen, where they're using that autonomous vehicle on the on us, on the software, on the vehicle itself to drive around, pick up passengers and drop them off. This is different in the model itself, so that it's getting the vehicle from one place to the next, and then allowing customers to continue to rent [2:03:39 PM] and use the operation. >> Got it. So this is not a taxi service, correct? This is more of how do I move my commercial fleet from point a to point B kind of service. >> Correct. >> All right. Well that helps a lot right there. And then finally there's not quite on point. But since I have you all here, waymo recently released their the crash data across a handful of different places I think San Francisco Phoenix Austin Austin didn't have a ton of data yet but but we were were getting there and you know, at least what was kind of. They were touting the fact that for the number of miles driven by avs that the accident rates were low compared to human drivers. Have you all seen that data? Any thoughts on that? That kind of our first real [2:04:39 PM] world experience with avs out in the wild, any compared. And again you know it it compared to us human drivers and with all our failings and and problems. >> Yeah. I can tell you, you know the promise of new mobility technologies like these is that they're going to be safer overall in the future. Right. And so it's it's promising to see early data being released from the companies that are showing that that potential is there. What we've always said, I think from the city's perspective, is that we'd like to see kind of independent research being done from probably academic institutions to be able to really compare apples to apples, what's happening with human drivers across all conditions on the roadway, making sure that we're not just comparing miles traveled within an urban environment. We're comparing the full scale of what human driving looks like, including freeways. And that's where we've seen as as you all are very aware, with our vision zero data, a lot of our crashes happen on the highest speed roadways. And so from a safety perspective, to compare apples [2:05:41 PM] to apples, we need to see that full scale and scope of driving across the whole network that human drivers would do, and compare that against the autonomous vehicles that would be doing the same. So there's there's different perspectives on that. We just want to make sure that once we get to that point where we've got enough data to accurately compare, we're doing that in a statistically significant way. Methodology. Methodology is accurate, that sort of thing. I'll hand it to Rachel if she's got anything to add. >> Yeah, absolutely. We would love to get the data from our av partners so that we could run the analysis ourselves. And I think that, you know, nhtsa, we're very close partners with nhtsa and NTSB and fhwa, and they are doing a lot of work there. So we're excited to see what they're producing kind of independently. >> Great. And that's a good point where an in Austin, for example, the very limited area, very limited driving area, they weren't driving on the highways, at least I think they are now. But I think they weren't at the time. So it you can't really kind of compare that to the full universe of driving. And but I guess the results, again, [2:06:42 PM] from the company's perspective were so significant in terms of like they were touting like 90% less crashes and, you know, injuries and whatnot. I remember the details of that. I mean, obviously it caught my eye and I was just wondering as to the validity or at least the kind of peer reviewed nature of that information. But basically, we don't know at this point. Got it. All right. Thank you. >> Thank you, mayor pro tem. Let's go with council member harper-madison. And then I'll have a couple questions at the end. >> Thank you. Chair I appreciate the recognition. Thank you guys for this presentation. I, I personally like the jetson cars, but I know so many folks who would never. You understand what I'm saying? In which case, you know, people used to smoke on airplanes too. Things change. But I'm curious about what does outreach to our constituents, communities, etc. Look like. If for no other reason, I'll point out, you know, as a differently [2:07:42 PM] abled person, sometimes, you know, when my body does what it wants to do, I really need access opportunities. And for folks for whom that's their lived reality. Every day I see this as an opportunity for access and mobility. It's really phenomenal, especially not with having the caveat of trip after trip after trip. In terms of your charge, you're using the car today, but I'm thinking about a few practical things. For example, this vehicle. Thinking about like for example, if you have a handicap placard, a permanent handicap placard, you can park in any paid parking space for free. Does an does a human operated vehicle make it easier to navigate nuanced scenarios like that? And my curiosity, I'm I'm thinking the benefit of the human is things like that. And I'll offer another example. I may or may not have taken my [2:08:43 PM] glasses off in a waymo and they slid off. I heard them slide off, but I forgot to reach down and grab them. And as soon as I closed the door, the waymo's gone and my glasses are gone, never to be seen again because the system is just kind of sketchy for getting your stuff back and for them getting the car back to you. So I'm also curious if a human operated car can adjust for snafus like that. >> Well, I'll take your first part and maybe Rachel can do the second. You know, I'm glad you mentioned the access, because really, I think that's what the S&P really lays out, is making sure that we've got choices for everybody that have different needs. Right. And so we want to be able to have that car share was a very popular concept I think five, ten years ago. We've talked about missing some of those options in our own conversations. And so I think having those options available to people that might not want to buy a car just for a few trips a week, they have that option to be able to use. That is something that we're interested in exploring and [2:09:44 PM] seeing how that comes out within the the full suite of options that we've got here in Austin. And so I think the second piece of your question, I'll pass over to Rachel. >> Yeah, the av safety working group, which is comprised of police, fire, ems, the airport, schools and capmetro, aid and capmetro has met with the tele operations folks, not just the company that's talking about coming here, but other companies as well. And they what they like about the human driving is that they think it could solve for some things that they struggle with with avs. Right. Which is hand signals, you know, dark signals, things, things where avs maybe need a little bit of time to process. A human driver, even if they're not in the vehicle, usually can interpret a little bit faster and comply with with officer instructions. So that's one place where where they are kind of happier with this model or, you know, more excited about how it can interact. As for lost things, you know, the av safety working group can definitely help you. >> Because. >> Ultimately, what I mean, I don't want you to put too much [2:10:45 PM] emphasis on my losing of things. Don't be calling me out here. What I'm trying to say is like the quick return, like I wasn't I hadn't taken a step yet. I closed the door. Oh, shoot. And there was no way for me to say stop right now. So eye contact. You'd go through the prompts and then ten minutes later, who knows where that car is, you know what I mean? So that's the thing I'm talking about. Like quick adjust for, oh, hey, can you stop real quick? You know that that and don't you don't have to spend a lot of time on it. I was just mentioning it as something to think about, but I'll move on. So one of the other things I was thinking about with human operators, a potential benefit. While I love my fellow humans and I have a lot of hope for their evolution, they still do stuff like pull off shenanigans with ai cars. I wonder if a human operator also has the opportunity to make. I've watched adult humans manipulate the waymo's to do [2:11:46 PM] weird things because they, you know, obstruct them or whatever. The thing is, does a human operator have the opportunity to bypass some shenanigans? >> Yeah, I think that's going to be a key difference, is that the the Tesla driven vehicles have a human operating every movement. And so the autonomous vehicles might be programed to take certain actions based on what they're seeing outside the vehicle. And so the human driver would be able to make that decision based on what they're seeing outside the vehicle, depending on, as you said, the shenanigans that are happening outside of that vehicle. >> I'll add this one last thing that I thought about from an access perspective. My sister was in a pretty catastrophic. Catastrophic, rather car accident. And has she suffered a closed head injury and has been up for 25 years, has been a person who's differently able and doesn't work, can't work. I it just occurred to me that you don't have to be able to walk to be able to operate a vehicle and have this be employment opportunity. And that kind of blows my mind that [2:12:48 PM] a differently abled person is operating a vehicle for, you know, potentially an able bodied person. It's just kind of mind blowing and awesome, you know, to think about the unilateral application and it somehow making our systems more inclusive is thrilling. And so there was that. And so the other thing I wanted to ask was, you know, I never thought I'd see the day we'd be having this conversation. I entered council on the tail end of the Uber conversation. Glad I didn't have. I wasn't a part of it, but I watched it go down. And so I'm curious if you have any questions or concerns or feel like, you know, the driverless car in the car driver car if if we're going to bump into any major pushback and find ourselves in a real big litigious situation again, or are we battle tested with waymo and some of the other ones enough? And, you know, the the [2:13:50 PM] tank cars to where that's not a concern you have. >> Yeah, I'm not sure the specifics that you were mentioning on the initial things that happened, but I do know that the difference here will be this is not a rideshare operation. And so there will not be passengers that are being driven by another human driver or by the autonomous vehicle itself. And so the tele driving would happen with nobody in the car. Then it's just like a car rental is my understanding where the person has rented the car. And so they are, instead of going to a, you know, an airport kiosk to get their rental car, they're they're doing it from their house, from their app. The car shows up at their house being tele driven, and then they're just renting the car and they're driving it. So how that person chooses to use the car during their rental is obviously something between the customer and the company itself. What what we're seeing is that this will be kind of a different scenario based on the business model itself. >> I really appreciate that. We don't have to take the same considerations as we did with scooters as an alternate [2:14:51 PM] mobility option, you know, like people being able to discard scooters in the lake and, you know, all the weird things that happen with scooters or an overproliferation proliferation of scooters in a certain area or whatever. I really do appreciate that we don't have to consider any of those things. The cars are bound by the same rules that every other driver is obligated to comply with. So yeah, all in all, I'm excited. I'm looking forward to to seeing how things progress. Thank you. Thanks, chair. >> Thanks. Council member I think we've got vice chair qadri with one more question. Then I have a few questions before we move off this topic. >> My last question, I promise. What would the what's the geographic region that these cars would be in? Because I know when the self-driving cars started, it was they were concentrated in a specific part of town. Is that is that the same situation with the Tesla cars? >> Again, we're still in the development stages of the agreement, but I would anticipate something similar where they start with a smaller footprint, smaller fleet size and then start to build out from there. So it'd be probably [2:15:52 PM] something similar that we'd anticipate as the avs also rolled out. >> Got it. Thank you. >> I appreciate that. And I know council member harper-madison already touched on the the liability a bit on that component. I'm curious about camera sensitivities. Is this and if this is undisclosed technology, let me know. But I'm just curious, is it like one person staring straight ahead, steering it like a video game, or is it like there are sensors where it will be able to tell there are cars merging in their Laine, or other sorts of considerations that the the driver who's not there in that vehicle should be aware of. >> So different companies have different setups, but the sensors are pretty similar to like a modern vehicle like Laine assist, you know, and a number of video and sound. So but nothing. Not like the lidar radar set up that we see on a lot of avs. >> Okay, I know the autonomous vehicles have generally been [2:16:54 PM] able to pick up on things that maybe a human driver is less able to pick up on, like pedestrians at night where you can't see them, or other sorts of surprise moves by other drivers. And so I think that part of the technology is helpful, but I just can't, for the life of me, put myself in the position of I'm on a computer in an office somewhere, and I'm expected to safely get a car from point a to point B, that's just baffling to me. So hopefully there's some technologies that have been implemented into these vehicles to help with that. There's a bit of just being city of Austin, where it seems like we're a Guinea pig a lot of the times, and they they deploy things in district nine, downtown Austin in a way that I'm sure the qadri team really loves to see all the time while they work out the, you know, the hiccups at any sort of new technology might have, but just trying to make sure that at at the end of the day, what we're thinking about is safety and making sure that any sort of new technology is not [2:17:54 PM] disproportionately hurting pedestrians, cyclists, moms pushing strollers, people in wheelchairs. Any of those folks are folks that are downtown. Grid in particular, has done a great job of protecting. And I want to make sure that as folks test new technology here in that footprint, that they are also stepping up to that commitment and trying to make sure that people are safe as they're getting around what is a congested and and populated area. I have one last question. It's going to be about wi-fi connections and power outages. What safeguards are in place if something happens where the person who is operating this vehicle remotely ends up with a glitch of some sort and cannot continue to control that vehicle, does it just stop? Or does someone else log in and take over? What does that look like? >> If the communication between the vehicle and the person driving it fails, it will slowly come to a stop in Laine. >> Okay, okay, so we might see some of the same situations [2:18:55 PM] where let's say there's a a red light or I've even seen downtown, it's not even blinking red light. It's just all directions ended up red before the device could be reset. And, and there was an autonomous vehicle that just didn't know what to do. So it sat there and created a situation where everybody had to merge around. And god forbid, there was a public safety vehicle trying to get through in that moment. It would have it would have caused a lot of chaos. And so I hope those conversations are happening on the on the back end with you and the new technology. >> Yeah, I'll just say council member, obviously safety is our number one priority as well. And that's why we're eager to have this mou in place and then maybe work towards what those rules would be like through an ordinance. You know, the the companies also are very incentivized to operate safely. So they are putting in place, you know, redundant power sources, ensuring that they've got connectivity through multiple vendors. I mean, there's there's going to be a number of kind of redundancies built in to ensure that they don't lose that connectivity for more than a millisecond or two or something. And then beyond that, I think they're [2:19:56 PM] recognizing that if they do lose that connection, the vehicle would slowly stop again. Once that connection is back, you've got a human driver that's actually operating the vehicle. So if there is a situation where there's a dark signal flashing reds, they will be able to see around their vehicle to see how others are reacting and any public safety kind of direction they would be able to react to as well, as opposed to autonomous vehicle software that's trying to figure out what to do. And so a couple of distinctions there between the two, and I think we'll be keeping a close eye on that safety element. >> That would be great. And I'll just say in our last couple seconds of talking about the topic, I hope that there is some sort of visibility to how to get in contact with the owners of that vehicle. Let's say something bad happens and there is a collision or a pedestrian is injured. How does that pedestrian know who to contact? Where is the liability? You know, cars go into the auto body shop and they're saying, okay, well who hit you? And you're like, I don't know. It was blue and it took off and I [2:20:58 PM] have no way of knowing. So I hope there's at least information about, you know, any sort of identification number or one 800 number if that's the case. Like making sure that any folks impacted have a way of feedback to make sure that they can, you know, follow up on what needs to happen if if something goes awry and, and someone is unsafe in that moment. There's no other questions. I think we'll move on to the next topic. All right. Let's take up item number six. Sorry I did not announce this ahead of time. The briefings by memo was thinking of bringing those up. The first one is about our future 35 cap and stitch program update. I think the only question I have on that one is, have there been any other further updates about timelines since the memo was distributed in early January? And I think there's a work session where we may take this conversation up. Do we know what date that we're going to? You know, the council is going [2:21:59 PM] to be taking up this information again. >> Thank you, madam chair. Richard Mendoza, director of transportation public works, since the January 9th memo, there's been no updated timeline provided by txdot, and we are planning to come to work session to discuss the financing model at the March 24th work session. >> Okay. Late March. All right. I look forward to that conversation. I know the last time we had visited this topic, it was looking at city council needing to make some of its financial decisions earlier than expected. And I just want to make sure we don't take our eye off the ball on making sure that we hit those deadlines. I know staff's doing it. I just want to make sure that city council members know exactly what we need to know and when. And then item seven is the bond initial draft project recommendation memo dated January 21st, 2026. Does anyone [2:23:00 PM] have questions on it? I found it to be fascinating, but didn't have any follow up questions. It does not appear so. You're off the hook. I caught you though. Okay. Item number five, the report by the Austin transportation public works related to ongoing mobility programs and projects in the central Texas region, including a whole bunch of other things they put in the posting language. But this used to be the director's report. >> Thank you, madam chair. And yes, very active last quarter or last month regarding mobility around the city of Austin. So attached in your packet, we'll begin with the events that occurred January 22nd through 26. We did experience a significant winter storm in our city and mobilize with all most other departments, as well as other agencies, to ensure the safety of our city. Just some quick stats here. [2:24:03 PM] Street and bridge crews were able to go out, as depicted in this photo, and proactively pre-treat over 347 Laine miles of critical streets and 66 bridges. In addition to that, we responded to more than 66 emergency operations center requests and addressed 240 plus customer service requests, in addition to street and bridge operations crews, signs and markings. Crews were active, as well as urban forestry, arterial management and signal maintenance. And our communications team, which staff the joint information center 24 hours a day for the duration of that event. So I'm very pleased to report that the training and the exercises that we went through last fall proved very beneficial in our ability to maintain our mobility infrastructure through this crucial time. I also want [2:25:04 PM] to thank our community for heeding our warning to not go out and try and navigate these conditions unless absolutely necessary, necessary. The second page. It was mentioned prior. We celebrated the grand opening this past Saturday of the wishbone bridge. So this bridge has been highly anticipated. It was delivered two months ahead of schedule and on budget. My sincere appreciation to our partners again, capital delivery services. It was a well attended event and and completes the ten mile loop for the Ann Roy butler trail. And so looking forward to many generations to come to enjoy this significant improvement and mobility and amenity for our community. Next, more activity in regarding the much anticipated groundbreaking of the congress urban design initiative, the county project. So this is to improve the [2:26:05 PM] blocks beginning at Cesar Chavez going north and this initial phase through seventh street with improved public spaces, improved bicycle facilities and street trees, if you will. And so here is a report on that activity. This construction will take place through the duration of the next 18 to 21 months. We'll be working one block at a time. And for updates on that, we do encourage folks to text at construction to the number indicated on your report. That's (512) 890-3099. Moving on to the release of the annual local mobility plan. And so this is the annual local mobility plan that we publish each year that shows upcoming planned work that's been funded, capital work for our local mobility programs funded by prior mobility bonds. We [2:27:05 PM] released that map at the end of January, and you can follow along on our progress throughout this year by going to our website. Austin, Texas gov slash mobility slash annual plan. And for any questions, you can also provide feedback to our department. A lot of activity going on related with txdot and the I-35 capex project. In fact, they will be releasing frequent updates on significant Laine closures, ramp closures, and Laine reassignments through the duration of this construction. The information located here on the last update reflects some closures at the Woodward avenue crossing. That's going to be permanently closed, and there's some detours that are going to be in effect to support work going on at the Riverside drive. I really want to strongly emphasize and encourage our [2:28:06 PM] community to log to access the txdot website and register for updates. They will be sending these on a continuous basis, weekly or daily, or every other day as needed. To get the most up to date information on any Laine closures and construction activity related to that capex. 35 so this is starting to look real up to this point. A lot of the work they've been doing has been subsurface with the drainage, utilities and utility adjustments. And then on both the north and south extents of the I-35 capital express project. Now we're in earnest, starting to work on the central project. A couple updates from Austin airport, austin-bergstrom international airport, or us. I have to admit, I'm not as familiar with this work, but a lot of activity going on with the expansion. A couple of significant agreements that are being made [2:29:06 PM] possible by the expansion, I'm sure the first being new lease agreements that will effectively enable expansion of cargo activities at the airport. And then they're proud to announce the concession contract. And I'm going to say the name of the company only because they originated in our own city of Austin. They're Austin born Kendra Scott. For those that enjoy shopping there when going through our airport. So that concludes the director's report for this month. >> Fantastic. I think I had just a couple of small questions. Do we know any sort of official headcount for the wishbone bridge cutting? That ribbon cutting was there. There were hundreds of people there, which is why I asked. I'm just so curious to know if we have any idea how many people attended. Not yet. >> Thousands. >> Thousands? I would believe it, especially over the course of the day. I mean, I think it [2:30:06 PM] was pushing between 500 and 1000 easily during the ribbon cutting itself. And I know that there were people who were, you know, kind of, okay, you need to get off the bridge so I can get on the bridge so that I can go look at it. Now. It was a really, really amazing event that I was really proud of. All the teams that have come together over the number of, you know, six plus years to see this vision actually turn into a ribbon cutting. So I appreciate that. I thought there were so many folks there. It was it was amazing. I had another question simply about the the I-35 capex central detour around lavender loop. Does that have any impacts to the animal center or emancipate or any of those other? I know the center is city service. Emancipate is another group that operates on that same footprint. Are there any impacts to people being able to access the the animal shelter and to be able to go adopt animals? >> So I will follow up with [2:31:06 PM] txdot on that. My expectation is that they would work with those affected property owners and businesses to maintain access at all times, unless it's intermittently in nature. I also do want to say that on the report it's been updated. It stated a February 1st closure. They did get feedback from the community in that vicinity with some issues that they worked, are working with them, and that dates actually been pushed back to February the 16th. So txdot is in constant connecting with any potentially affected property owners and businesses and working with them to mitigate those those impacts. But in terms of the shelter, I can follow up with them and and get back to you. >> I just want to make sure as we try to make sure folks know that we have these amazing adoptable animals that folks aren't showing up intending to to foster or adopt and, and not being able to get there. Are there any other questions from committee members? Nope. It [2:32:08 PM] does not appear so. All right. The next is just a list of previously distributed memos. There is one about vehicle engine noise that I know that the Austin police department has been working on lately, and a government relations update about legislative and grants updates. So go ahead and check those out if you want more information. And then the last item is identifying items to discuss at future meetings. Right now for March we have a project connect recap and Austin light rail updates. I know that there correct my language. It is a draft. No. They got their record of decision. Everyone's nodding okay, good good. My memory is not failing me. So we're just looking at what the next steps are as we as we progress down the conversation of the light rail, a citywide lighting plan and in April would be potentially our 1st April bike month. I know that I've been talking to a couple of [2:33:08 PM] advocates around this. May tends to get really hot, and so if there's anything we can do as a city to help make sure that people can participate in active transportation and want to give bike to work day a try or other sorts of bicycle friendly modes of commuting, we would love to be able to encourage folks to do that. And there are at least two cities in Phoenix or in Arizona that already do this because it's hot in southwest United States. Bond bridges briefing on redbud, Barton springs, wishbone bridges and street impact fee study update. So those are potentially April conversations. If those are still on the timeline that we're seeing right now. And then in may, looking at a draft carb management study and potentially looking at another discussion about bond decisions and things like that. So we've also got probably about 15 other things on the list that have been requested over the past couple of months, but you're always happy to daylight. Any other feature items you want to see today or email us. [2:34:09 PM] You know where to find me in this building. >> Thank you very much. >> Okay, I think that's all we have for today. So on that note, it is 2:34 P.M. And I am adjourning the mobility committee on February 12th, 2026. We'll see you next time.