Transportation Commission 4-17-19

001call this meeting to order here here commissioner parson commissioner sim here commissioner Trudeau yeah sergeant they'll clock here commissioner Dolan here commissioner house Commissioner Lazarus yeah Commissioner Margolis commissioner Webb we have a quorum great thank you we have a consent agenda to approve the agenda and a motion to approve okay seconded by Trudeau all those in favor any opposed any abstentions all right then we have an agenda and the first item on the agenda would be public comment and so you have three minutes to speak Kayla will keep the time if there's anybody here that'd like to speak Thanks Clark charnetski my remarks tonight concerned the proposal to amend and arbors crosswalk ordinance that change would require pedestrians wishing to cross the street or roadway to place themselves at risk in order to have drivers

002yield to them and uncivilized crosswalks including those with flashing yellow lights I am a member of the Executive Committee of the local advisory council of the Ann Arbor Area Transportation Authority and represent the Area Agency on Aging the local advisory council advises the board of directors on matters concerning services for seniors and passengers with disabilities we discussed the proposed changes in the crosswalk ordinance at our monthly meeting last week we were not able to vote for a recommendation on this proposal because of concerns for separation of public bodies however during our discussion no member of the council that has about 10 or 12 people thought that the proposed change was a good idea they expressed fear over the requirement that they place her bodies or their wheelchairs into the roadway rather than at the curb

003or crosswalk ramp in order to have drivers yield to them some indicated that they would not try to cross streets as this change were made in 2017 the city of Ann Arbor Country contracted with the atul Design Group to provide a an independent engineering review of Ann Arbor's crosswalk ordinance the memorandum regarding this review dated November 13 2017 is in your meeting packet and a Prichard certified public or certified professional traffic operations engineer with the 11 years years of traffic engineering experience summarized her organization's review given the disparity in sight and I'm quoting given the disparity in size and inertia between pedestrians and more vehicles expecting the pedestrian to fully enter the roadway before drivers are required to yield would put pedestrians at unnecessary risk by defining driver yielding requirements at crosswalks in a clear

004and explicit manner that allows pedestrians to safely make use of their right-of-way and arbors crosswalk ordinance provides a reasonable contribution for ten arbors efforts to advance walkability and pedestrian safety an arbor has more pedestrians in most cities in Michigan so it is reasonable to expect the city to fine-tune his traffic ordinances to meet its responsibilities those who are concerned that the state rule is different from that in Ann Arbor should work to change the state rule to be like that of Ann Arbor which is better for both pedestrians and drivers thank you thank you anybody else would like to speak yes Jim Mogensen so my rule is that the laws of physics override the laws of people and I remember I was the first person to yield for anyone under the crosswalk law and I

005know this because I was at the City Council where is passed and I was the only member of the public still there and I then on the way out yielded for them councilman Mike angle right and my concern was that nobody knows about this and indeed I used to live on Northeast Ann Arbor the next week someone rear-ended the police chief and in fact my mother a delivery person who didn't know about the rule yet was intentionally rear-ended by a delivery person who was angry that she was not moving and a bus driver had to stop a bus and get out and tell him yes indeed she is supposed to yield I now live on Packard Street it was an interesting trip here and when I leave it's like yet another interesting I'm in favor

006of pedestrian safety and my concern is one time I sometimes come here at CNN there's Episcopal Church and I was at the crosswalk at a division and an Street it's a real tricky thing and it was a police officer behind me I didn't want to get $140 ticket so I yield it the police officer didn't it was close but he didn't hit her it's amazing to me that more people don't get hit in armor I'm in favor of figuring that out but we have to find a way we assume because in my a little circle like my mother everybody knows what the rules are but the reality is most people don't we're in this connected society where we think everybody knows when I come into town I know if I come into special time if

007I'm gonna play rehearsal or something I come at the same time I know which students are gonna my only rule is you need to look I will yield for you but not everybody knows that people come from Brighton people come from Dexter people come from right all over the place and they drive in and they don't know what those rules are remember when we had the parking enforcement challenge and even people on Nixon Road and probably what most of that was regular local people didn't really understand the rules yet and we had been pretty far into that so I'm concerned about this I understand on both sides what the deal is and I think we just need to figure out how to make sure people are safe pedestrians aren't supposed to walk in front of

008cars right it's part of the ordinance to protect the people in cars so if there is an accident both people didn't do what they were supposed to do that says if you're not supposed to walk in front if someone is not able to stop it's a real challenge even coming here today at the corner of Packard and division a real tricky out that's another tricky intersection there where you're supposed to yield with the pedestrians but then the light changes and it's very very complicated and not everybody knows what's going around people go around you when you're you it's amazing so I hope we just can figure out a way to make it safe for everyone thank you thanks it's anyone else you'd like to speak alright then public commentary is ended we have a presentation

009about get downtown welcome and I'll just update that Commissioner Klieman is present so that will be reflected in the roll call thank you great so thanks for having me back on a completely different topic from when I was here in November I'm Chris Simmons I am the Business Services program manager for triple ata which also means I get the privilege of being the program director for the get downtown program I've been asked to do kind of a smorgasbord of projects here but mostly talking about our program survey of downtown employers and employees and hopefully provide the highest of the highlights to help you as you examine the transportation issues for specifically downtown Ann Arbor for those who don't know the program was actually co-created back in 1999 by the Downtown Development Authority the ride the

010city and the Chamber of Commerce but today remains a partnership between the DDA the city and the ride and we're continuing to focus on multimodal approaches to look at both the employers and their needs as well as the employees and their needs there has been some confusion over time as to whether or not since we're now housed within the ride as to whether it's just a bus program it is not we are just as interested in biking and walking and telecommuting as we are about transit ridership and as we are about carpool and vanpool usage so our goal is truly to encourage the use of all the transportation options for employees to meet the needs and for their employers to be able to have the level of talent and and diverse workforce that they are

011choosing to have so periodically we conduct a program survey and you can see there the years that we have conducted that survey and we call it a survey technically it's actually two done pretty much concurrently one is to the business decision-makers so there can be a manager or an owner talking about what their business needs are and that is regardless of whether they are participant in the go pass program or not as well as downtown employees again we've got about a 5,000 person mailing list which includes employees from all different modes and it doesn't matter again whether they have a go past or not so our 2018 version included responses from 77 decision-makers and 380 employees pretty representative group of what we know to be downtown the statisticians will come back and quibble about statistical

012validity let's not get into that the the baseline is that this is pretty pretty valid for what we're able to get for voluntary responses for both downtown employees and decision-makers so we're testing for a number of pieces from the decision-makers one are you aware of the program's existence are you aware of the program's benefits and then trying to get a better sense of the business needs of what those businesses are looking for form our program much of our funding goes into marketing and outreach and frankly one-to-one consulting with businesses so it helps us to know exactly what they're looking for so we can help fine-tune what our program offers them from a general standpoint folks are pretty aware of what we do the the carpool parking piece that that we indicated at the bottom of

013this is not as well known and I think that's because we don't have a very robust awareness of carpool parking in downtown period I'll get in a little bit of that when we get into the employee section you know we generally ask the is the program a benefit to your business in general you know that's a fairly hefty response that decision-makers do think we are of benefit to them and what the professional surveyors will tell you is the fact that nobody said and it realized there's a double negative here but nobody said that there is no benefit to the program at all is actually remarkable you'd expect at least somebody to say that the program has no benefit to them but you did not get that response in the survey at all so regardless of

014how well they are using their services or how much they're using our services they see the program as being of benefit to them in downtown and again we take a look and trying to fine tune the needs of the organization what type of organization are you are you a traditional eight to five type of business are you providing open business hours at all sorts of different times and the answer is we've got a very large mix of businesses in downtown which is great from a viability standpoint for downtown but can also make it challenging as you're trying to dial in transportation solutions that meet everybody's needs in the process and then since this has been coming up quite a bit recently we we asked the question this time about how important it was that their

015business was offering some version of a commuter benefit whether it's just the go past or something else as as a way to recruit and retain those employees we've especially been hearing a lot of this out of the hospitality industry and you can see the responses there they range from helpful to critical and if you're a wonk like me and Wade all the way into the eighty page report with its its graphs and statistics you'll also get more information about why that's important to them and how that did impact their choice to remain in downtown if they had a choice put in front of them in general the fact that these employers have this option being offered to them is at minimum helpful and it maximum critical for their operations so then we flip to the

016the commuter side of this and one of our questions we ask all the time is what is your usual mode to get to work and most people when looking at this graph will focus on 42% who are driving alone to work everyday and go what do we do about that 42% I choose to focus actually on the 58% who are doing something else other than driving alone to work you look at standard census statistics for journey to work and what people use for their mode to work and this is a remarkable number already for the number of people who are not driving alone doesn't mean we don't have work to do but it does mean that there is a pretty good awareness out there of people and their options for being able to get to

017and from work without driving alone the next piece I ask because this helps dial in what sort of services are needed for what people is how far is it to and from work what we actually found in this survey is that this actually kind of break neatly breaks down into quartiles and they're all highlighted there and that means you have to pitch different options based on how far somebody is coming in to and from work I would not expect somebody to make a 20-mile walking trip to be able to get to their job to be able to turn around and make their 20-mile walking trip back home because they're probably not going to make it to work so when we look at our services we have to look at it in terms of distance and

018who is that market that we're trying to serve with what service our advantage as a program is we at least have a service that meets it meets each one of those quartiles the issue is finding those people and being able to match them with the right information to get them there dialing in when we start getting into the people who drive alone every day because obviously that's still focus of the program can you get them to change if not fully at least partially into using another mode you know if they're not interested it's not worth anyone's time to try and get them to change their mind they're probably not going to listen to you in the first place so how do you get at the you know 25 percent or 23 percent that's very interested

019and the 15 percent that's just under that that's a pretty significant percentage of that 42 percent who reported driving alone saying yeah I'd love another option talk to me about it how do I get there but then we get into which alternatives they're interested in and this is where I want to call you back also to that quartile piece on how far people are what we found in this survey is that there's a lot of interest in being able to use the bus to be able to get to work and a lot of interest in biking both of those we think are pretty good given the overall quartiles but making sure that people have the right information to overcome some barriers or perceived barriers to be able to transition into those modes that's more of

020a challenge and that's where we're trying to set our marketing up as we move forward how do you help people overcome those barriers and so we asked what the barriers specifically the the part here that we get a lot of in these survey responses oh yeah I'd love to take the bus all the time but a kid do it cuz they have to get kids or I'd love to bike in but I have to get groceries every day on my way home well there might be other ways to go around doing some of that so you get a lot of I'd love to but we're trying to get at the buts as we do this diss arguments as well argument but also a conversion as well the folks who just prefer to drive that nine

021percent they're always going to be there doesn't matter what city in the country you're in there's just people who like driving and that's fine they have options already it's how do we help the other folks be able to take advantage of their full options moving forward so from our next steps what we're looking to take the survey towards driving - next is really how do we take this distance to work and the perceived barriers and match that up with our program marketing specifically what we're interested in targeting is the folks who are living for miles and in and how can we help them use a combination of walking biking and transit to be able to make that journey to work and journey home for those 10 miles and out our focus is truly on how

022do we help them find carpool partners and vanpool partners to the van ride program to be able to make that trip more affordable and more accessible for them and specifically doing more of a networking push on our car pool matching app that we partnered with SEMCOG on for a commuter connect mi comm and then for those who are in the the middle you know continue to use the and promote the go pass the awareness is very high the ridership is very steady so it's really just a matter of making sure that those employers are taking care of and managing their their individual employer programs with those additionally the first go pass was issued in 2000 so we're going to figure out a way that we're celebrating 20 years of go pass next year I have

023yet to get creative on that because it's the rides 50th anniversary and so I can't celebrate too many anniversaries at the same time it just gets confusing so we're gonna figure that out and you can expect some message in the run that for 2020 and then we're gonna try and figure out how we get people to overcome those perceived barriers that need to drive can we promote other options for mid day trips can we show folks how people can take advantage of the car sharing opportunities that are already in downtown to be able to make that trip so that they don't have to do the their own vehicles and there are some of the downtown co-working spaces that are already trying to find ways for their participants to be able to take advantage of that

024how can we encourage more of that sort of thinking Arbor bike is that relaunches is certainly an opportunity for folks to take a mid day trip without bringing their car in and then you know transit is certainly an option especially if you're in downtown you've got 15 minutes service too much of the rest of the community in one way or another maybe you're not driving in but you can use that go pass to be able to make those mid day trips and at least leave your car parked so these are the sorts of things we're going to be exploring with downtown employers as well as our partners with the city and the DDA these are the sorts of efforts that we look at as being collaborative it not one person can do it all or

025in the case of our program not two people can do it all we have to work with everybody in the community and our community in this case is those folks who live work and on businesses downtown which is why I would be remiss if I didn't remind the Commission that the commuter challenge is coming up very shortly if your employer has not bombarded you with messaging yet on participating in the commuter challenge you should become a team captain and go to commute and win and sign up the spring challenge is the team challenge as I know mr. Lazarus is painfully aware of given his history of winning in this competition but this is we we try and base this off of different sizes and different types of companies so that everyone's got a shot there's

026a number of random prizes and it's really not to make sure that everybody and their brother is doing the same thing they've done every day but really give an excuse for people to maybe try that bike trip into downtown that they hadn't thought of before or actually reach out to that co-worker that lives maybe on the other side of Brighton from them and be able to carpool in that's the sort of thing we try and do with the challenge less about overall numbers and more about hey you really do have options this is an excuse to try it and you know if they sign up and at least complete one of these commutes they've got a free cup coupon to wash not dairy so you know it's not like this isn't the win-win for everybody

027involved here and then because I was here in November we figured we'd better talk a little bit about our bure bike just very briefly the equipment has all been reviewed for sturdiness and stress tested and it appears other than some minor edits are ready to go we are anticipating a launch date to be coming later this spring TBD on exactly what that dates going to be we've still got some pieces in the pipeline that we need to get final dates back from in terms of future planning we're actually not taking that part on through the the partnership behind the operations for our bure bike we've actually left that to watts which has its own grant for studying this and they've brought in experts and from outside the community who dunno bike-share quite well to be

028able to start looking at what a future expansion or edit to the system might look like and if you're interested in that I'd encourage you to check out their website at arbor bike-share playing comm they're hoping to publish their results sometime in July if I have that right I think that's right to be able to talk about what might be able to come next but in terms of program updates in terms of launch date and announcements we'd encourage all of you to check out the new website for the program at Arbor bike net it right now says coming soon because we haven't given you a launch date but there's there's a date in the back of my head that I'm hoping we hit I just don't want to announce it so that if it moves

029I'm not disappointed but we do expect to be up the spring so with that I would be happy to answer any questions that the Commission might have it's a lot of information you know it's trying to distill it in something understandable and compact but happy to answer questions now or commissioners have questions later happy to take those too thanks very much when I was reading the report I just wanted to highlight a couple things when I was reading the report I found it fascinating that that 5:00 p.m. rush hour really is a 5:00 p.m. rush hour like it's nothing and then all of a sudden it's everything and then it's nothing I think that's gonna be you know one of those challenges that we have to think about if if we're designing for 45 minutes

030of traffic or are we designing for 24 hours of movement anyway what I wanted to focus on was the bikes that 36% of people interested in biking is really interesting to me I'd suggest that you move beyond the four mile and the reason I suggest that for encouragement is that the south side of Ann Arbor I think there's a five mile write in and once you get into Pittsfield and epsy Township it's about a five six mile right in it's flat relatively speaking and ebikes are a game changer and they're getting less expensive so any way that you could bring that encouragement out to those ranks and from that standpoint that's why we try and partner a lot with the BWC the bike alliance and common cycle I don't consider myself a bike expert but

031I like to coordinate with the people who are and to the extent that we can find those those pathways and make those of more interest the piece I'd also recommend on the biking side is if you go to the car pool matching app and I probably should have given you a screen shot but if you go to commuter connect mi comm it's not just about matching for carpools and vanpools it's actually an entire multimodal trip planning effort that also includes options for individuals to show themselves as bike mentors or walking mentors for people who are interested in perhaps taking that same trip but aren't confident in figuring out how to do so so it's a really interesting tool that we haven't fully developed the the marketing behind but I think as we look at that

032you know what do you do for four miles what do you do for six miles or from where I'm hoping to use that tool a little bit more and maybe create some of those options for some of the mentors to encourage folks who would not otherwise take that trip I really like that idea I had a similar thought when I was listening to this presentation about the bikes in particular and how they changed the game a bit we just converted our cargo bike this year and are doing the kindergarten commute every day with our kid on the back and it's been fantastic where before that but he'll going to the west side was a big mental barrier and now it's no big deal and and so one thought I had while listening that as we

033there at the University of Michigan program that does the trap like the driver behavior research did a program where they lent out ebikes to do sort of incorporate cyclist behavior I don't know what they would be a partner or something like that could be something that we could like look at like will loan you any bike for a week so you can just try it and just like have a queue of people are interested like in the technology but it's an expensive commitment so they might not want to commit and just taking it for a test drive doesn't you know at the shop isn't really enough to give you a sense of what it feels like to actually do the commute so that could be a really cool I don't know how to make that

034happen but like if I talk to people and I have some ideas I'll send them your way but uh and I hope other people might too but that I think would be like they really sell themselves isn't like the first time I rode one from you know maple all the way downtown with my daughter went borrowed it from a friend and like it completely changed my perspective and I was like oh yeah we're dope we're doing this and I think a lot of people would make the switch if they had the opportunity and so there's an opportunity a big opportunity there I think I completely agree with you I think it is a game-changer and it's one that we're trying to figure out how we help people into that game by but not be necessarily

035the thought leader on that because our focus is those those downtown employees and that's more system-wide but how do you make that connection into the process and how are we helpful with that let's just say I got some things in the works that aren't quite ready for primetime that we're working on to help do that too and I'll say I've appreciated the expansion of the covered parking downtown when you know the DD has been really responsible listening to cyclists as parking bases have been getting filled up to adding capacity locked bike rooms everything else isn't it great to see so and I've noticed it filling up more and more so it's great much easier than reading the whole study all right we have a report from the micro mobility committee briefly I believe very briefly

036we haven't met since the last meeting they there is a draft ordinance that we've discussed previously that is waiting for review from the city's legal department so as soon as we get that feedback we'll take one more pass I think before it comes back to this table seeking recommendation and do you want to say anything about the contract that the city I don't know anything about that but if mr. Hester mr. Lazarus have any any information about spin or what happened with bird yeah so back in November I think many of you are well back in September bird came to town and kind of caught us by surprise and we John Fournier the assistant city administrator contact the lead in drafting with legal department uh kind of operator agreement for the scooters in town and

037during the course of that three months in the contract was for three months so for bird it went from November to February and we found that bird wasn't really holding up to all the parts of the agreement that they had agreed to and so staff was prepared to not give a favorable recommendation for the renewal of that agreement in the meantime there were other scooter providers that had approached the city that were a little bit more cooperative in terms of how to develop the program to share data and you know make sure that there's a system in place for you know mitigating scooters that aren't parked appropriately especially if they're on the sidewalk and places where they shouldn't be and so right now it looks like you know spin is kind of the operator that

038was just approved by a council and so again it'll be a similar it's pretty much the same terms as the other agreement with bird so it's three years but I think there's an opportunity to extend if they're meeting the terms of that agreement I'm sorry three months did I say three years I'm sorry three months sorry yeah three months but there's an extension or there is a possibility for extension built into the contracts do you know whether the draft language like because I think some of what's in the draft language is different from what would be in a in an agreement with spin you know what the how that'll be dealt with if by draft language eventually gets adopted I think probably to be determined but I one of the reasons why we are doing

039them in kind of these short durations as it gives us the ability to you know make adjustments to both that operator agreement reflective of anything that comes out of that ordinance so I think there's that opportunity to do that Thanks thank you and Brad do you want to talk about the CIP committee sure Syrus is very much miss committee and and this list actually reflects probably the last time that he was here I think he put together the list Forrest drafted that list the only thing I'll draw attention to is that the CIP committee has requested to see the plans for Platt Road that run from Washtenaw to Glenwood we're asking to see actual detailed engineering rather than the concept just because it's such a potential high Destry and cycling destination with County Farm Park

040very good recreation center all the retail there there's a bookstore across Washington to Whole Foods as well as a school and a lot of folks also use that intersection into Schaeffler Park to get across and then cut into a neighborhood so this is gonna be a tricky but interesting project I think all right thanks thanks for carrying the weight in the committee so with the Commission then like to make a motion to accept that list of projects that I requested for review that's what you've done in the past years make we should do that yes okay seconded by that's a member as well any comments or questions about so somebody say they're presented and we had presentations on that what does accepting this mean actually I'm a little confused like okay we've had the presentation

041does that mean it's gonna come back to us again my understanding is it's likely not gonna come back to us again when it was presented there wasn't any yeah you know the stone school for instance the plan looks great to me you know I I don't know if we need to see detailed engineering like we do on the more complicated sections yeah I'm just a little confused as to what this vote means because it's accepting the committee's recommendation the committee may also see these things again and bring it to Commission as needed and I think there are a couple that the Commission has not yet seen and so this there was a committee that was appointed by the king to look at the CIP and to say these are the ones that we think are

042important for the Transportation Commission to look at and so this motion even though some of these presentations have already come it's the Commission's opportunity to as a body say that the work of the committee is supported and if there are commissioners that feel otherwise that this would be the opportunity it's establishing buy-in and what the committee's work that has been done and those presentations coming that have come already sort of needed to come because of where those projects were in the process and we didn't want to miss the opportunity so we didn't want to wait for this formality to happen to hold up those presentations we knew they were going to be requested so we brought them at a more appropriate time any other questions or comments I guess I'm wondering why there isn't any

043recommendations why it's just a list here like just I think if you look at the committee charge the committee doesn't make those decisions but but highlights them for the Commission is that right yeah that would be why okay committee does have opinions on things okay shall we vote all in favor say aye all right and he opposed any abstentions seems it's unanimous great the next agenda item is to talk about the the e exercise and some of that material you've got in advance with the agenda and some of it trickled in including another piece for tonight I think that it's not entirely clear what the next step will be because we had to look at this material in order to know what those next steps are if there are things that jump out at you

044that you can comment on or in general we can discuss this for 20 to 30 minutes but I think that part of this is for Kayla and I to have time to look at it integrate it into future agendas but certainly if there are priorities or issues that pop up then this is a great time to to say that but we haven't had a whole lot of chance to look at it either so but thank you for doing the work those of you yes a little bit more about going forward I mean we cyrus actually sent me this I think we got it in a meeting but there was a mmm part of the charge was to come up with some action steps or follow-up requests and I mean is these are these things that

045we would discuss as a committee and potentially adopt or I'm not sure as a commission yes a commission yeah yes I think particularly we have agenda items for the future and I want to make sure that these pieces are integrated into those agenda items and that we're looking at it more holistically rather than piecemeal yeah no I agree I think I found it hard to just think about engineering as a isolated thing and not think about the other pieces no I really like the idea of integrating them yes in terms of evaluation I looked at a number of things but one that that's really troubling is pedestrian crash data and the more I look at it the more questions come up so I'm pleading for some help and for example in the first three months

046of this year we've had 23 pedestrian crashes and of those 11 were from left turns on the vehicle was making a left-hand turn and hit a pedestrian so I hope to get some help and look at this and maybe there are some more short-term immediate actions that we can take based on this they don't know what they would be and they'd probably be engineering but it's just really troubling the number of left turn pedestrian crashes okay so that's an item that we could highlight for looking at in the near future yes to go along with that comment I was really interested in the bullet point on the one of the equity summaries that mentioned disparity and pedestrian fatality rates based on race and social class so I would like to get more background on that

047and statistics and information I think that'd be helpful okay so you're taking note of this gala thank you yeah I think in my report it was generally I guess we kind of have these two equity reports but they both serve different purposes because there's equity in like modes and equity among like people like and I was kind of thinking more from the modes and I guess my point was just the way we treat like as far as like what we're gonna do with roads like whether we're gonna widen or make it make it more narrower or whatnot like the equity of how we deal with like the effects on like like vehicular travel versus non vehicular travel and how I mean know we have these like level of service things but I don't know how

048we take into account non vehicular travel and just the other thing is also and land use the way we have like parking minimums but we don't have requirements for other kinds of access I know I don't know I mean it seems like we don't necessarily emphasize those as much and just how we can essentially encourage better like a better balance there that takes all people into account regardless of mode and I know a lot of established metrics and like design tends to favor automobiles and look at vehicular travel and which I would say it's an outmoded concept yeah yeah partly because vehicles are going to shift in their role so much yeah yeah I'm very concerned about what I'd call demographic equity and as a school board member I tried to focus on that just

049looking at the quality of our schools and we provide safety busing when it's not safe for children to walk when they're within a mile and now I think it's a mile and a half and I saw much more of that in the wealthier communities than the schools that had a greater number of free and reduced lunch programs and one of the problems was that parents would come and say well if we don't get what we need then we're going to go to a private school so you had that force going and I think that that equity for pedestrian safety is really important I was talking to a Detroit City Council member and they put many bike paths in downtown Detroit and so the impression is a lot more wealthy young people are riding their bikes

050in Detroit but what he said is a person more the group of people most likely to be killed with a pedestrian crash is an african-american male over 55 years old riding in his neighborhood and so these tend to be people who are rioting because of necessity and so they're not benefiting yet from all these new bike lanes that are being put in the downtown area in in the areas that are attracting wealthier young people so I don't know if that makes sense but yeah we definitely have to be aware of it I had actually another comment it was about it was kind of demographic but it was a little different as far as like demographics like traveling like as far as like transit like right now we have a lot like overnight there's no bus

051service and all is nitride which is more expensive and inconvenient and also like really depending on what areas like our bus system is heavily oriented around downtown so if you're not traveling to or from downtown it can be a lot less convenient and I feel like there perhaps needs to be like more look at how the transit system serves and like yeah I feel like the network they've developed it and yeah there needs to be more outreach as far as like because I know like like the RTA they're doing these citizens advisory committee where as a triple-a ta I mean aside from when they've done like their whole 2014 expansion it's been more limited as far as that and I feel like we need to look at that more because I think there's certain like

052commuter Peaks in downtown tends to be favored in the transit whereas yeah the others and also there's things like the participant people with disabilities a ride and how that works compared to the fixed route bus system and so is there a current report or evaluation on that topic for triple 88 well I mentioned that my report are you asking about I don't know so that's that's something to follow up on to find out what is the existing information and how much work would be involved in in finding out yeah and my understanding is the triple a ta is going to be updating kind of their long-range plan as well in the coming well starting in the coming months so there is some opportunity for you know having the transportation plan update for the city be

053complementary to the the one from the ride and vice versa so we've been having some initial discussions with triple-a ta staff just making sure that there's some opportunity for coordination you know one thing that what we've said at the staff level is you no it's not for the city to necessarily plan the rides system or the ride to plan the city system but if there's a way for the two plans to be complementary to one another then in you know in theory we can kind of achieve that so I think you know identifying some of the goals that Commissioner hull just mentioned could be reflected in either plan or both yeah I'd be curious about that so we have about ten minutes left in this discussion yeah um as I was reviewing these a couple

054of things came to mind one is it's sort of short-term where do we go next and I think Julie's engineering piece is a perfect example of the smaller asks that we could ask staff to help us with for instance how do we get system-wide data going right and understanding networks and connectivity and that kind of thing instead of looking at just at crash reports additionally and this came up in two of the reports how do we account for near misses or perceptions of not feeling safe and then the fourth one the speed reduction task force the question is if there's obstacles in implementing you know what are those obstacles that would be good to identify those those seem like they're fairly I don't want to say straightforward but they can be near-term sort of asked

055the the longer bigger piece I think so I drafted the equity piece that I basically summarized the Federal Highway Administration because as you probably saw the other one there's a whole list of resources like I spent a lot of years in grad school and this felt like that again it is a huge topic it's new there's not really standards here yet there are really great examples but you got a dig you got a search and you got a think and I think that this is really important and it's really promising so I'm I can invest some time in this but I need help and I think I need somebody who's paid to do these sorts of things to help this commission so that might be part of the the zero of project zero vision zero

056sorry that might be part of the vision zero plan stepping forward right have some sort of subgroup really tackled and try to come up with the best examples from various communities because one two three commissioners aren't going to be able to to really do it justice and it's really exciting and it's I think that people are gonna be passionate about pursuing it so it's the one thing that tickles my brain about that is that we don't want to sort of randomly say well the staff should give us this or that information but actually do it in a more coherent and unified fashion and so a future resolution request that we could draft that said this is the kind of information that we need in this kind of forum in this frequency would probably actually be

057what would be helpful yeah so I'm not sure how to write that at this point but we can do that yeah and if I made a Commissioner Parsons point um you know I think that point is well-taken that really where I think there's an opportunity here as if the Transportation Commission gives kind of some direction that can be incorporated into the transportation plan and that direction can be several different things right it could be best practice it could be you know metrics benchmarks goals related to any of these things I I had a my expectation this is just Raymond speaking wasn't necessarily to have of you know you do all the number crunching and all that I think the idea is give us some direction and staff and/or the consultant can see how this plugs

058into either that plan or you know a separate document for example or you know find out kind of the best pieces so so yeah I think really what we're looking maybe at least what I'm thinking of is in a point us in a direction on each of these ease and one of the things we should be kind of what should be on the radar and then we can kind of continue to refine that over time and and figure out how to plug it into like the transportation plan in particular so that we can identify benchmarks goals metrics whatever the case may be so just a few minutes more remaining other comments or suggestions yeah another thing I came across and we've been using it in Ann Arbor as well as Pittsfield Township is the electronic

059radar speed signs and what I found on the internet and there were a lot of references on Wikipedia that looked like they were reputable sources although I didn't look at all of them showing a definite reduction in speed especially for people who are driving ten or more miles above the speed limit and the price of these devices are going down and they not only immediately provide feedback so that drivers reduce their speed but they also capture the speeds that are overt they capture that data over time so you know what speed people are driving different hours of the day say so I would be inclined to say let's look at this in more detail and this might be something that the Transportation Commission wants to recommend as a short-term action for reducing speed limits not

060speed limits but reducing speeds alright I'll just briefly confess to being the person who didn't do their homework and apologizing for that but this is helping me understand much better what I should be doing for enforcement so I will plan to have my report for a next month great life happens sure does oh sorry just as a reminder staff is available you know if you'd like to reach out to me and my team we'd be happy to assist with that I know Commissioner Boland had asked for help from staff and so she coordinated with Cyrus on that so so feel free to contact me and we can try to talk through this to the extent that we can be of assistance so I think we've got a good amount to move forward on so in

061terms of next steps does the do the commissioners that have worked on draft reports and those that haven't yet worked on draft reports want to prepare a second draft to bring for the next meeting incorporating some of what you heard in the discussion tonight or where do I just wanna be clear on where we stand with next steps recognizing that you're not going to we're not expecting that these issues are going to be solved or the all of the recommendations identified but having something to hand off for the Commission to take action on perhaps at the next meeting is that the goal would you want to talk more about where you're going from here I need some time to sit with it and see what's what we've got putting it together especially Kathy I'd also

062like the opportunity to talk to other members about engineering because there was some overlap and then also with equity because some of the evaluation showed gaps in you know in inequitable delivery so would we be able to do that and then maybe bring back something at the next meeting or do you want us to wait until you've had a chance to look at the report no so don't wait okay if there's it's gonna be a real discussion then let's do it out in public with the open meetings but just contacting individual people you know like if I wanted to make a contact with enforcement or equity that should be fine but if you have any doubts or questions and Kayla can help you out right sharing resources with each other is fine if you feel

063that you're looking to have discussions that are deliberation elaborations that would inform potential recommendations that you might make in your report then I think we could schedule some type of a meeting that would be open to the public and it would allow all of the commissioners working on reports to come together so let me know if that's something that you like great I'll just say real quickly this feels more like fact-finding right now than putting together recommendations and deliberating so if there are people who want to reach out I would encourage it and we'll just keep it to the fact-finding and try to get the best description of each thing together so that we can move forward next crosswalk okay moving on to the next item we were asked by City Council to review a

064suggestion to amendment the crosswalk ordinance and you have a copy of that proposed amendment and I don't know if there's a status update given that yeah yes I wanted to withdraw that language as a local ordinance and councilmember Nelson wanted me to wait until the disability Commission met today to talk about it but there is action on a state crosswalk law that would negate the need for a discussion about any local ordinance amendments and I will withdraw that at the next I'll bring forward a resolution to withdraw that at the next council meeting so does that withdraw council asking us for no I can't speak on behalf of colleagues also if this is gonna perhaps come back once the state has a crosswalk law if it is differ from our existing law and if they

065would want us to possibly adopt what the state has and there might be some concerns there depending on what the state has right so far what I've heard is that this commission would like to speak again you have in your packet the information about our little crosswalk history which includes the resolution that we made on November 15th which was short and sweet but I'll read it the transportation commission recommends that City Council maintains the crosswalk ordinance in its current iteration based on the review and discussion of the ordinance that the Commission has had and the research that has been done by staff and that's what we passed unanimously back in November so we can affirm that if we wanted to I've seen lots of head nodding we can also say something stronger if we wanted

066to what what's your pleasure I was prepared to talk a lot about this but our first speaker stole my thunder so thank you thank you for pointing out your excellent points particularly that different cities and municipalities need to adjust for the types of users that they have and what makes sense so I will be affirm reaffirm our current language or make it stronger and I don't know how much more I need to weigh in unless others not yet so is there any other path any other option that people would like to consider other than affirming our previous motion I don't see any little I think we just decided to not weigh in until the state come came back with any changes actually that's not what I heard no I would like to reaffirm the current

067language and address the state issues that may potentially arise but this was about changing the sidewalk law independent of what's going on at the state yeah and I don't think we weighed in like officially we didn't pass anything saying anything about the current language we just we did in November yes no I was saying the disability Commission oh oh okay I'm sorry yeah and we don't have the language or the information about the state law at this point so yes or the uniform traffic code we have adopted those by reference so as far as a new existing ordinance if it's comparable to what we have now or stricter or whatever thank you okay so we might add to this motion that we would like to look into the the state law the state I'm not

068sure exactly how to word this but this the any in the draft state language of being consistent with Ann Arbor crosswalk that could be so bold so you're saying we'd like to find out more about that and talk about it here or more about the state what the state is planning to do that's another option I mean I would like so I would like to find out what the state is planning but also strongly reaffirm the language that we okay no I don't think we need to wait but it'd be nice to be prepared going forward maybe putting it on an agenda in the future is that so would we still be timely if we had that as an agenda item for next month so May meeting we would look at the state proposal and

069I think we can pull that together I don't I'm not involved firsthand with the state crosswalk ordinance revision I'm not sure who at this city might be but I can reach out and see if we can get someone lined up but we can work towards that for them may our meeting in May is May 15th that comes a little soon but we can try to get that together okay so two separate motions although actually the agenda item for May doesn't have to be in motion but I must suggest we do that anyway everyone I have a question which depending on the answer I'll make some suggestions in this I think probably goes to staff so if if the state passes a new ordinance do we know if it will preclude us from having our own

070standards or is that dependent on how the state drafts that particular ordinance do we know that's what was just mentioned well not exactly you so I think certain clocks point was that if the state passes the ordinance it will it will be immediately part of our code by reference so it will be adopted automatically but if we also have our own ordinance what our own ordinance also apply or would it be obliterated it's through this sort of a quiet and I don't I don't and I cuz I know in some cases like the state regulates things and we can't change it and in other things we can so I don't know if we know or I can anticipate what that will look like you know I think that depends on the form of what the

071state legislature passes okay then my I mean my preference would be and I think this isn't where maybe we're going is that we should just reaffirm the language for the local ordinance and that and the preference to keep it the way it is whether or not anything happens at the state and we can also have a conversation about what the impact is on with the state ordinance when it comes so I'll take a motion to affirm they said basically the exact same language as we had previously and the second motion after that will address the future agenda item I would move to have our current language reaffirmed seconded by all right any other discussion a bill to unified state crosswalk laws was introduced last session but it didn't go anywhere I cannot predict what will

072happen this year but nothing has been introduced yet so there's no reason for me to believe that in May that there will be any kind of crosswalk bill I see what you're spaced on a search in Michigan I just got your site for the word crosswalk there isn't a bill in there there isn't approved language but there is language that was approved by MDOT and it's in legislative services right now and so no one really knows when it'll come out of legislative services because it's sort of a first in first out sometimes it takes budgets for the service bureau a couple of days sometimes takes them a couple of months right okay any other discussion or should we vote all those in favor say aye any opposed all right one opposition any abstentions all right

073in his past and I'll take a motion to have this be on the May agenda for the addressing the state law that language makes sense to Kayla emotion to discuss the state crosswalk law at the may 15th Transportation Commission meeting and to take action and to take action it's that we can still comment where it is Kathy you had you're seconding that or a second okay I missed who made the motion so it was Klieman and Chris okay any discussion on that motion all right all those in favor aye any opposed any abstentions we have that unanimously great and now we'll talk about the budget thank you good evening and thank you for the opportunity to talk a little bit about the allocation of the resources humanity will entrust with us and for the coming

074year on Monday at the opportunity to present my budget recommendation to Council I do apologize I was supposed to do this last month and I was detained in Lansing due to forces beyond my control but the advantage of doing it this evening is the budget is much better formed and you still have the opportunity to weigh in both by making a recommendation to Council including those things you might like to see changed if any this is a very comprehensive approach we are fortunate this year to be able to have sources of funds that we didn't have in the past and use those responsibly not only to advance items of concern to our community but also to look with an eye to the future and that in a very fiscally responsible manner as we know good

075times don't last forever so I'll give you fair warning while these slides are very wordy they're meant to be as much of a reference as they are presentation I'm not going to read every one but you do have that for your reference as you discuss and even after this evening if you want to bring things up separately to your elected officials this can provide a base for you to do that as well so when you look at the budget for next year the total budgeted expenditures are about four hundred and thirty million dollars total 111 million of that is in the city's general fund that is actually about an 8% increase in expenditures much of that is driven by salaries and personnel cost many of which are governed by Union but there are some new

076funding opportunities in there as well I'll talk about that all of our fund balances will remain within the city's policy goals the general fund balance at the end of the two-year fiscal plan will be at 17.4% which is midway in the 15 to 20 percent call that the city has all of our general obligation bond rating is at a very healthy double a-plus from Standard and Poor's and you can see the increase impacts to our residential rate and taxpayers 12 about $11 a month I do note that the actual property tax rate under Headley went down this is a total funding by priority and I broke it down by areas of interest I combine both Street repair and maintenance and active transportation as one and that funding went up by 4.3 percent as you look

077down the list there are some things where council has made the decision to really put some of in priorities that may have language Tinh the past those include climate action and sustainability affordable housing and community mental health as I mentioned at the start it's a very robust budget in terms of putting money aside for things that are important but as I talked about additional funding I want you to bear in mind that of almost 40% of that new funding that is in the budget goes towards reserve accounts so it is responsible in that way also there's some capital improvements that we need to do that we need to start putting money into sinking funds for as well but this gives you an idea of where the city's priorities are and how much we've been able

078to adjust each one of those new funding in the budget is about four point two five million dollars you can see where the funding goes in the right hand column the safe drinking water water and sewer infrastructure really that money goes towards needed dam repairs that are a general fund obligation and all this funding you see here is in the general fund so as you look at that the two that I've highlighted in red are items of specific interest to the Transportation Commission both street resurfacing and repair and pedestrian safety projects the footnote on the on the bottom references other which is a when we looked at the survey the city didn't for which we got the results back on the 25th of March there are other things that people had mentioned the areas you

079see up here we're specifically called out in that survey every one of these areas meets the proportional amount based on what was in the survey or it exceeds it based upon both funding from the county military bait and other sources and top it shows that there's 2.2 million in County millage rebate funds about 1.9 million from general fund sources and then an additional dedication of 140,000 from the street millage fund for a specific project this year also we're paying attention in detail to performance measures for the past several years we've included metrics in the budget book but we haven't really reported on them because we've been validating the numbers and we report on them from year to year this year we're going to start posting those on a quarterly basis following internal quarterly reviews those

080measures relate the expenditures to the outcomes we hope to get we're going to start with fourth quarter FY 19 year end results and then report on them quarterly putting them on the city's website in addition to that we've also developed a set of performance measures key performance measures KPIs that are shown in storyboard format an example of wages on the right for the police department and those will also be published externally the intent there is to answer the public's question how do you know or how do we know that you as a city government are doing a good job this will be updated continuously as we get the data it'll be populated automatically somehow through the mysteries of our data collection and IT system but you'll see it continually as we can get them we've

081done this for fire police finance we're finalizing it for our community services group and the last and perhaps most complicated is public services we hope to have all those also posted and available by the end of the current fiscal year it certainly supports those who want us to be more data-driven in our decision-making within the new funding I'm going to trace where the money goes so I talked about $350,000 for streets it goes into public services engineering and it gets put into the pot with street repair and resurfacing of note is that we have experienced increases in costs some due to materials some to to demand for services but everyone around the area has noticed a particular increase I think somewhere around 12 to 15 percent and our cost for resurfacing that's not correct Raymond

082please correct me on the next couple on this on this slide counsel was asked for these new funding up options that we provide some outcome base goals so you've seen the lists of work we want to do our goal is to do 80% of what we report on that gives us an aggressive target but also recognizes that sometimes things don't work out we still have the goal of having all of our pavements in good or better condition which is a rating of 7 or more by 2025 it's going to be a it's going to be a sprint to get there but you don't lower your standards you raise your efforts on pedestrian safety we have $750,000 in a new funding in addition to what we were allocating before the $140,000 for the fuller crosswalk comes

083out of the millage or the street millage monies and that is a specific project that council has asked us to do in FY 2008 of various forms of active transportation improvements mostly crosswalk improvements but also bicycle facilities and again these are the the goals supported the scope the partners and then the the outcomes so take a look at that as well and again this these slides are really provided for your reference but we do have an ambitious plan also this year to address lighting improvements both maintaining the existing lighting we have and then adding Lighting's based on a priority basis to the highest priority intersections and crosswalks based on staffs evaluation these are the map shows tentative surface treatments we did provide the street work plan to Council on Monday along with the budget this

084the map on the right shows all the different types of treatments were going to use the funding comes from a street millage act 51 funds grants and other sources and the work you see is a result of some in-depth coordination with our utilities work and University DTE and others you'll note some of the areas in blue where we're doing resurfacing rehabilitation we are starting to focus as we did last year on neighborhoods so that we can come in destroy the peace and harmony in a neighborhood one time and then you won't see us again for quite some time after that rather we also get better pricing when we crypt the work geographically what's shown in yellow is a continuation of what we started last year as well which is capital preventative maintenance we follow all

085laws but the ones we follow the most or the laws of thermodynamics which means things tend to deteriorate so we do preventative maintenance to preserve the pavements so that what is in good shape doesn't deteriorate and we extend that life as well I talked about lighting and markings you can see the map here shows the priorities were where we're going to be working we do have an allocation from the county military bate and you can see how it's spread out for new streetlights existing streetlights and paid crossings and then on pavement markings there's six hundred and sixty seven thousand dollars as well and that gives us 37 miles of long line marking basically center line 14 miles of bike lane and then during 75 intersections so the level of activity over the last couple years

086has certainly stepped up mr. Hutchinson mr. Hess and all the crew deserve a lot of credit for being able to push workout and make our roads better and safer some other items of interest and I'll touch on these lightly I'm sure at the time we have allocated you may want to talk about some of those some council members have asked me to update you on the north side safe routes to school project Monday council set the date for the public hearing on May 20th I have been in contact with people with sources at MDOT to look and see if there are ways to adjust the scope before Cass council has asked me to do as well we have added a senior transportation engineer to the FY 2008 with the idea of that person will have

087expertise and non-motorized active transportation DDA has presented a lot of the work they're doing you will see through personal and painful experience that you're on street will go down to two lanes for most of the summer partially because the DDA's work partially because we're taking advantage of piggybacking on a DTE project to replace gas lines that produces our net cost savings to us as well since DT will pay for a partial Street restoration v and Detroit project can be done this summer as you remember last year we ran into some delays due to the labor disputes that occurred and then the early onset of winter but you'll see the cones out there this week as well the and Ashley garage just gets for this year and my favorite on that list is the William Street

088cycle track which is also scheduled for this year again working with EDA on that project the city actually transferred 65% of the cost of the pavement in fact it DVA for that work that there's also a water main that's part of that project we talked briefly before about scooters pedestrian beacon and your on fair and engels in Pioneer high school I went to Pioneer high school after a long period of time and much concern from the community was installed this spring and we have gotten word from MDOT that the crossing at your on between Theron ingles is on their program for next year we are trying to work with them to accelerate it so we can do it this year that's tied to the intersection of 3rd and Euron because MDOT has approved a hawk

089signal as opposed to an RR FB for the your on it there and a full signal at 3rd and your on so we're trying to get them to let us move the signal for one place to another and try to do it faster so he'll push it MDOT for allow us to work in their right of way to get that done there's public meetings going on now about a four to two lane reduction on Earhart some of you have involved in that the really good news is the Allen Creek berm opening we have all the easements everything is done we should start construction on that this year we're hoping for it to be in the June contract letting from MDOT got some exciting things on pothole technology which I am technologically ill-equipped to discuss but

090it is basically a spray technology that allow us to repair them faster and my favorite thing on this slide is we are buying our first hybrid Police Interceptor Council approve that on Monday so police department is leading the way in green fleets procurements as well so that's kind of a very quick rundown hopefully whatever I didn't talk about Raymond well in his update but there are a lot of exciting things in the budget we're certainly going to get to see firsthand what as the governor calls FTD our looks like in an around town so as you are inconvenience to remember the outcome are better roadways and with that whatever questions you may have that I can answer I'd be happy to entertain thank you no questions yeah so can you just help me interpret the

091numbers so like the 224 pedestrian crosswalk improvements I have no idea whether I think that's enough or not enough because I don't know what that buys us so there is $750,000 that we put aside for pedestrian safety that is new funding when you add that into the 2.2 million I'm sorry to 3.4 million that's a pretty large increase over the previous year about 55 percent so it buys us crosswalk improvements striping lighting signage some we talked about electronic signals that's in there mr. griswold talked about the electronic speed signs that tend to slow people down there's several of those in the budget there are some electronic school zone signs in the budget as well for that we started last year so it's a lot of work I've provided to Council a more detailed work plan

092and that all that information is posted in ledges star as part of administrators communications also on the public services website it is a lot it will be it will be pressed to get all that work done this year but it is a I think a visible commitment that your elected body has taken seriously the importance of non motorized transportation and is challenging us to deliver a very active program so I think the real answer is a lot of this stuff in the details you're gonna have to look up and if I may add to that commissionable and one of the reports that was provided to council that howard is referencing was looking at what are kind of typical costs for different types of design and crosswalk treatments now it's kind of a range right because

093until we get into a specific design and engineering for a crosswalk we don't know if a pedestrian refuge island is part of the process we don't know if they're bump-outs as part of it if it's RFP but you may recall some of the past discussions we've had about the crosswalk design guidelines the idea is if it's standards standard Plus or high-risk depending upon the roadway type it would get different different types of treatments may be applied to that crosswalk and so we looked historically at what those costs were to kind of come up with ranges for each of those and so there is a link actually in your packet that if you want me to come back at a future meeting kind of go into more detail on that I can do that but it

094I think that in a roundabout way answers your directly your question about how you know how much do these things cost is this enough and kind of helps tease out what some of the low-end estimates are and what some of the high-end estimates are other questions yes so thank you this was really helpful am i my understanding from what you've presented in the slides is that in terms of cycle infrastructure specifically bike infrastructure most of that is in the remarking of the of the roads that when we're talking about aside from the William cycle track that most of the bike infrastructure is painting bike lanes is that that that's correct okay one of the challenges that I've laid out for for Raymond also is where we can squeeze down the lane width and put some

095more buffers in between the travel lanes and the bike lanes we're going to do that wherever we can last year every significant road project we took on had a bicycle lane component to it so a lot of that work is shown as part of the CIP program and doesn't come out of that particular funding but our goal is to make it people feel safe cycling and not just to plot you know appeal to the hardcore do-or-die cyclists but those who fall into that general category of interested but have concerns the other thing that also that I pointed out as part of the William Street project we are purchasing some smaller equipment to keep those lanes clear even in the wintertime and that they'll have application in 2020 when DDA also does the one way to

096two-way conversions on first and Ashley and they'll be buffered lanes there as well so if we're gonna be serious about encouraging people to cycle all year round we're going to have to make sure we clean lanes clear all year round and not store snow in them any other comments or questions yes the spending on streets didn't go up very much but I'm assuming that if we're going to improve the surface of the bike lanes that's coming out of the street funding is that true it depends when we're doing when we do major street work it's included in as part of the work sometimes it's just a striping project as well one of the reasons that the street repair and maintenance has stayed a little bit flat part of that is funding that goes towards capital

097improvements and that varies from year to year and part of that also is from on a yearly basis in the past we haven't spent all the money that's in the budget so it rolls from one year to another when we look at doing major repair work it's not it's not just a funding it's coordinating it with water and sewer utility work and that funding doesn't show up in them and in that amount they're also we have availability of contractors and as much as we'd like to do as much work as fast as we can people still have to get around so you have to be wary that we've got a you know there's so much you can bite one one year right and my point was that we have a total for active transportation but

098it's probably even more because some of the street fund spending is to improve the bike lane surface would that be true well this number includes up more than just your own fund I mean this is more than just the general fund monies this is the CIB as well right I was just looking at this street repair and maintenance and and so some of those dollars are going to go to repair and maintain the street surface that's actually in the bike lane all right so the the capital repair and maintenance program puts on a smooth surface it seals the roadway and weari stripe including including bike lanes I had a question here on street the DDA project do you know if they're putting positive contrast lighting at the crosswalks on Huron I don't know I will

099Oh or I can ask them and I just want to make a statement I voted on Monday night against the DDA project and it wasn't because I'm against protected bike lanes it's because I would really like to have more centralized control of all of our projects and I know that the DD at right now the DDA has money that we don't have and so we have to be appreciative in my answer to that is all that money eventually comes from the same place yes right so that the advantages of having a DDA is that they do maintain an operator parking system they do help us fund downtown infrastructure and promote business and it does come from parking revenues which really is a user fee but eventually it still same way so I think on a

100broader scale we all recognize it's all public money it all belongs to all of us and you have the fact that we can work together to use that leverage that funding for the best benefit of the public is important so just as a personal perspective it's all public money and we're respectful of all of it I totally agree with what you said thank you any other that's good I just wanted to say I appreciate the the establishment of the KPIs and those dashboards to make those data based goals and measurements digestible to the public I think having been able to be on this you know on these Commission's and work with city staff and see how decisions get made I personally like to see like you you all do use data and your expertise and

101all these other things and feeding in the decision but decisions that we're making but making that stuff accessible to the public invisible I think will go a long way to helping build that trust and and open up that transparency so I think that's great to see and using this as an opportunity to call back to the Cixi's and particularly the evaluation component I'm really hoping we can establish similar sorts of metrics and goals for vision zero as we move forward with our plan and wrestle with what that looks like because I think as people have already highlighted crash data is important but it's far from ideal in terms of really assessing how our streets are working and and even places that have sort of really had a look great feel of success with visions you

102are looking at beyond vision zero kinds of metrics recognizing that mode shift not only keeps people safe but it increases Public Health and health and general and happiness and sorts climate change bowls and other things so like there's there's other big benefits to these kinds of things beyond just the safety but Safety's sort of like the bread and butter and getting that right is great is the first step so well I appreciate the comment one thing I did forget to mention is we're also going to start with this quarter posting the quarterly project updates on CIP efforts so that'll be another source of information and data I think we all expect that the parameters will change and they'll evolve over time based on what we really need to talk to our to our public about

103but there's an awful lot of effort that staff put into making sure we understand where the data comes from what's the math to make the calculations so that those numbers are both repeatable and reliable please challenge we face is establishing benchmarks because there are no regional or national benchmarks so much of what we do I know with the 15 Circuit Court this for district court this afternoon and they have a very nice set of metrics but most of them are either set or set internally to achieve high levels of customer service so we'll continue to seek out best practices and see how other people do things but I would suspect the suite that we've developed will be used and modeled by others as well any other pressing comments or questions oh I saw the inner

104bur station on there I'm just wondering what's like the status of that I know they're going back and forth with the Fr a and there's different things being said and yeah just wondering what's going on there because it seems like it's been a while since we've heard and I agree with you and we are currently we were working on hopefully the last set of review comments we've got from fr a I think we'd all know that this project has had something of a tortuous past to get to where we are over the last year we've had two government shutdowns that have extended the process as well but we all hope that the finish line is in sight and the goal really there is to protect the work that we've done today to get an approved

105environmental assessment document so as we look at what makes sense for us to go for it in the future we're protecting the value of the work that's been done to date and get that get that EA finished get the preliminary engineering that goes with it finished so we can then start to make plans for the future both scheduling and financial right we have a resolution and response to this presentation which was included in the packet so I wonder if we are ready to make a motion concerning that resolution anyone interested all right seconded by all right motion Griswald and Trudeau thank you any comments on the resolution itself which is to support the budget moving forward through the budget process the transportation portions of it all right then all those in favor say aye any

106opposed any abstentions it's unanimous then thank you all right I believe we have transportation updates yes madam chair you'll note that the transportation update monthly progress report that we give is starting to ramp up right we kind of laid dormant during the winter and now spring is sprung and all of a sudden you start to see a lot of updates creep up on this report so I will try to quickly go through and highlight the changes from last month to this month the first is sigh Oh church mentions that work is scheduled to resume this week and end in early June we are going to hold a public information session about which alternatives are going to be advanced for both sigh Oh church as well as seventh and stadium Ida meeting on April 25th at

107Dickon elementary school the Fifth Avenue project which we talked a little bit about just a moment ago is going to resume this week as well the annual street resurfacing project is anticipated to begin in May of next month of 2019 sidewalk repair program I believe just launched this week so that is up and running as well North 7th streets here onto Miller we had reported on this late last year I believe and striping for this project is anticipated to occur late summer and we're gonna get that into the striping schedule crosswalk improvements commissioner Boland this is where I mentioned the link is included kind of embedded there but we you know we had several deliverables to report to City Council as part of the resolution that they passed one of them is you know progress

108that's being made on a monthly basis and we're going to share those progress updates with you and then one of them was also you know high level cost estimates and so that is included in there as well so some of the improvements that were identified for this quarter which will turn into monthly this was just the first report Howard mentioned some of these already but the crosswalk signage in front Pioneer High School was completely rebuilt and now includes overhead rectangular rapid flashing beacon signs school zone signs were installed on fuller road and here on Parkway around here on high school school zone signs on Platte Road south of Redwood Avenue were replaced and upgraded and preventive maintenance was done on all RF B's in the city that's tasks that the signs and signal crew goes

109out to make sure that the batteries are operational and that you know those systems are reliable throughout the course of the year I will note there are some changes to the rectangular rapid flashing beacon list or RFP list there are a couple things that have shifted around a little bit south maple was added between Benz and Russell Street there were several South industrial locations and added and South Main at field crest was added as well the one thing I will note is there were a couple locations on here on Parkway that are actually 2020 projects because they're being funded through a Highway Safety Improvement Program funding that the funding is not going to be available until late fall so that would be you know after October 1st so those will probably get installed in spring

110of 2020 Allen Creek berm opening Howard give you an update on that already but there is updated language we are expecting to hit June MDOT soon bid letting there is a new section about the Southside interceptor sanitary sewer project it's not really a transportation project but it is going to have an impact on traffic due to lane closures on fuller Street and Glen Avenue so it's really just kind of a heads-up that coming in May there's going to be some interesting travel patterns through an area that's already fairly congested so keep an eye out on that and if any commuters go through that corridor please plan your commute accordingly the DDA provided updates on their parking their bike parking installations and it looks like there are about a half dozen or so that are up

111several on 4th Avenue Liberty couple on Maine State so those are up and going and it looks like they're looking to even expand that program as well we are in continued negotiations with the triple-a ta about a new traffic signal at the intersection of Ellsworth and research Park Drive we kind of moving forward with that and it looks like it's hopefully going to be constructed in fiscal year 2020 but we're working through the design phase now there is a little bit we reported on this at the last meeting so I'm not gonna go into much detail but there's updated language related to the fuller Road crosswalk sidewalk extension pursuant to the action that council took last month so the progress report just reflects that Howard mentioned some of in the budget under the speed reduction

112committee recommendations on page 9 of the report there is talk of you know the additional staffing levels the the new senior transportation engineer that's being proposed as part of the budget that language is included in the update as well and that concludes the highlights of changes from last month to this month thank you thanks any quick questions or comments I don't know how quick this is gonna be it is only two topics one is that the train noise when we might be seeing survey results from that and there's some people on Facebook that are apparently antsy because it seems to be proceeding forward but it only got like 25 percent of the people supported it I don't know that so and when we might expect that and then I'll do the longer one so let

113me get back to you with an answer on that but we can I'll include updated language in the next progress report at a minimum and then give you an update at the next meeting cool cool and then I was gonna bring it up but it wasn't part of mr. Lazarus's budget stuff it was after the the a to steam grant comes up multiple times in our packets and it sounds like there's now discussion with MDOT I assume that's to allow single side sidewalks or something I don't know I'm just trying to glean whatever I can but counsel apparently has made action I think an update would be really nice to have yes so my understanding is council did approve for a public hearing on this to take to occur on May 20th so that's I

114believe step three in the process so right now that you're right they're still kind of discussion about different design elements but my understanding is you know the design is submitted design at the point where council approved the second resolution that was in late December there been some asks by members of the community to see if we hit approval for sidewalks on one side of the street so on behalf of council members I've asked the director of MDOT to talk to the folks at the Michigan Fitness Foundation to see if there was some way to get a singular one-time exception to their policy normally they only allow a policy exception for topographic reasons or some land use reasons and while we've reported back to council the deaths announce we've gotten from MMMF who administers the program

115for MDOT we have good relationships with MDOT so I asked if there were other avenues to have an exception provided if that comes back as that's the case we'll probably have to delay the project do some redesign if that's the action that council chooses to take in fairness staff has some concerns about sidewalks on one side of the street but in trying to be responsive to the requests from yeah from the elected body who is responsive to concerns of the residents on the street I went back and asked see if there were any other ways to at least present that as an option thank you thank you when we do hear back from them dot if there is a redesign I don't know if we could do it but I love the model that we

116did on silo Church where we had multiple meetings gave people options and that kind of thing I know this is a different funding source and it's safe routes and all of those sort of hurdles but any way that we can facilitate conversations and more input I think on this section would help I've had multiple personal conversations with people that I don't know from this road calling me based on somebody knowing them call you know I it's a controversial one and without being cavalier about this when you seek money from other sources you do have to follow rules that they establish as well as trying to be consistent with Complete Streets aspirations vision zero aspirations being respectful of property owners concerns as well as making sure that we protect mature trees that are very strong characteristic

117of our urban forests so you know putting sidewalks in an existing mature neighborhood an old neighborhood is a difficult thing to do and I know that staff has really pushed back in terms of the design process which initially would have required removal a lot more trees so we hope as I hope from the start that there's a good answer you know that we can find that that's out there thank you anything else all right thank you very much and we'll move on to the next item which it's not clear what what action you're asking for I think it's just an informational item and so we received it in our packet is there any future action that we want to take or questions at this time this is the resolution regarding community engagement an approval process

118for City related improvement projects this was approved last council meeting so it's too late we're going to do much about it I didn't like it at the time and I still don't like it but I see we could do anything about it okay we could say something a later time as far as a commission if you wanted to bring it up it's also possible to address it in a more generic form for any future types of items like this resolution the Council passed specifically addresses the current council approval for lane reductions and that's the item so in other words council doesn't want engineers to do it they want to do it themselves so we're not going to discuss the merits of the resolution right now but definitely could do that in the future yeah I

119see Kathy yeah for some reason there's been a lot of miscommunication regarding this and a lot of emotion and the way it was explained to me and so maybe we need to get all the facts out there is this is just stating that we're going to follow a procedure that existed for many years and only recently wasn't followed so now I don't know if that's 100% true so I think that before we have a discussion we need to make sure that we do have all the facts so I'm going to encourage us to have a discussion based upon some actions or requests rather than just generally reacting to it is there a request to do that in the future or just put aside some time next next meeting to share feedback on this I'm sorry

120yeah I think I think it would be worth putting an spot on the agenda to have the ability for Commission to have the opportunity to provide feedback if we can all agree on feedback we want to send so that would give of commissioners times to prepare what's the word I'm looking for we could we could discuss it and potentially pass okay and assemble some accurate information yes I just think we need to be careful and make sure that we're using the correct information before we move forward and my preference would be to focus more on something that's actually going to significantly improve pedestrian safety like looking at street lighting needs okay I think that this is important for all kinds of safety and I think it's worth are talking about all right so I will

121under the category of future agenda items Kayla and I will do that and my preference will be that we have a resolution or something to react to and to take action on so if anybody has any input on that within the next 3 2 or 3 weeks let us know you know I think it'll be helpful if you have ideas about what type of motion you think you might want to make if you can submit those to me then that will give Linda Diane and I something to look at when we do agenda setting ok thank you the next item is follow-up to outstanding Commission questions Commissioner questions which seems like a report that's fairly complete in and of itself so unless there are any clarifying questions on that thank you for that report and

122for the staff follow up and I'll move along to the snow buddy communication this this communication includes some specific requests for action items and I don't remember if we did it in public here or just Kayla and I discussed the possibility of having somebody from snow buddy come and talk to us and I think the beginning of summer is a great time to do that so this may be a great way to start that process so again on the on the subject of future agenda items we can set aside some time to respond to their request for action is that agreeable yes I see lots of nodding okay with that then we would move into the liaison reports and we do have a and our public schools update and unfortunately liz is not here again

123to highlight that but any questions or discussion about that report briefly it's great to have it each month are there any other reports from people who serve as liaisons to organizations yes since our last meeting I've attended meetings first with a subcommittee of the Energy Commission working for an ordinance to enhance electric vehicle infrastructure in Ann Arbor specifically what we want to do right now comparing language from different cities to have this force new homes that are constructed or heavily revised for instance they were gutted in a fire something like that to have level 2 charging equipment available in their garages great the other one is a County meeting which is much less structured an ad hoc that meets quarterly and the big issue for this particular meeting is and it's outside the city of

124Ann Arbor proposed bridge over i-94 in downtown epsilon T so but where they wouldn't pertain to this committee but thanks for being a representative any other liaisons yes if two dates to announce for public comment on the Washington Avenue bus rapid transit the AAA is looking for people to come and give comments on the reimagine Washington our future investments next week Tuesday April 23rd from 4 to 7 at the transit transit center and Wednesday April 24th from 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. at the Blake transit center three of the specific items that will be discussed at these meetings are integrating Express stop services along Washington Avenue signal priority prioritization for transit and enhancing corridor station so this is there's been public sessions before but ramping it up again in wanting more input great thank you

125any other liaison reports yes a couple things going on at the University you talked a lot about scooters here and City Council passing the agreement with spin we had also passed an agreement with spin so we're pretty well coordinated with with the city on the scooters and I've been working closely with Raymond and his team and John Tornillo so it just really didn't make sense for each of us to be thinking about this differently because they cross between campus and and in the city quite a bit so so we'll be launching at about the exact same times so so that's that's happening we continue to work on alternative transportation for parking for staff at the hospital we've really enhanced some in addition to what exists with the 4,000 staff a day that ride buses in

126from remote areas we're doing even more with more frequent smaller shuttles out to East Ann Arbor and things like that trying to reduce the congestion and the need to bring your cars in closer to campus continue to work on those kind of things and hot topics lots of lots of information or lots of folks reaching out to me in my office about finger lis and what we're doing with this especially around football a lot of people want to know so we're working on that right now quite a bit so thank you sure all right any communications from commission members real quick just real quick I'm gonna thanks for the the email responses that they sent out those were really comprehensive and and showed a lot of care and time and I appreciate it the second

127thing is to remind everybody that may is Bike Month and there's a lot of great things happening in the community some to get downtown some through local groups so just Google and Arbor Bike Month and you're gonna find a whole bunch of stuff including some calendars and that kind of thing so hope to see you guys and I'll mention on a personal note that my father is was a city planner here in Ann Arbor teaching city planning at the University of Michigan and he was professor emeritus and he passed away at the end of February February 27th and he's also a former chair and I think he was either a four or five year member of the Planning Commission and I just wanted to note his passing and certainly I would not be involved at

128this level or have some of the secret planning knowledge that I have without growing up under his tutelage every evening around the dinner table especially but that's something that has been quite a loss for our family and his memorial service was this last weekend so I'm hoping that it will be easier to focus and also have additional inspiration for me the next couple months as I process that that lost for us so I just wanted to mention that that's that's something that's important to me yeah I just want to thank staff for the work that they've started to do on getting pedestrian crash data and we haven't even talked yet about how we might capture close calls but I think that it's sort of changing the mindset as well as we collect this data and

129it's really hard to compare it to what's happening in terms of national trends because we know that pedestrian fatalities about 35% over the last ten years and some of that's due to the greater use of SUVs but anyway it's it's something that we need to do it's extremely complex but I think it's going to help us improve pedestrian safety in the long run all right any other communications yeah I just want to mention that I was appointed to the RTA citizens advisory committee and yeah I know we have an RTA board I think representative here but I just just want to let you know I'm surfing on that and they just started meaning it's really just like about four times a year at this point its quarterly so yeah we'll see what happens with that

130they the main thing I've heard that's going on is that DDOT and smart are you doing like a new unified by a new fair system where they can transfer between them without having to pay for a transfer and you can get a day pass and all right the next item is agenda item is for next time we loaded up a whole bunch of them wondering get an update on the train station because I don't know if anything is scheduled I think we're waiting for there to be a more substantial update I thought I remember seeing that as like a future topic I thought like we can check into that yeah well we'll continue to keep you posted on that any other future agenda items other than what we've gone into yeah we did a lot

131so yeah I can share what's on the work plan and I think that one Diana and I will need to balance between what was on the work plan and all of the items that have been discussed tonight to see what we end up with um but just to give you a preview what we had anticipated was a North Main Street stakeholder update about the MDOT project I'm not sure there's an update ready to give but that's a placeholder that we have quiet zone update requested and was scheduled actually to come in May North University crosswalk project for U of M so I'll check with Steve and we'll see if that's ready and we were going to have our representative from RTI actually present to provide an update on their work so I'll see if that's

132ready and if there's time in the agenda or if we push that out further great if there are no objections I will call the meeting adjourned thank you you