Sustainability Advisory Board – June 16, 2021

Video Description:
Sustainability Advisory Board – June 16, 2021

Note: The following is the output of transcribing from a video recording. Although the transcription, which was done with software, is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or [software] transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the meeting, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.

Read along below or follow along here: https://otter.ai/u/LSZSHQUeA7rOGCtcFGLo0dBvmjs

Unknown Speaker 0:00
I would now like to call the June 16 2021 Longmont sustainability advisory board meeting to order. Can we please start with a roll call?

Unknown Speaker 0:13
Yes. Joining us today are Kay Culbertson chair, Junior, Vice Chair Charles Musgrave and Adam Reed as board members. And then staff members joining us today are Lisa knob block, Annie noble, framesi jeffy, Tim Ellis and Phil Greenwald. Our city council liaison is Polly Christiansen, and then public in attendance will be Brian Jeffries and Monte Whaley. Thank you, and do we have a quorum? Yes, we do. Fantastic, thanks.

Unknown Speaker 0:52
Okay, so the next item on the agenda is the approval of the minutes from the last meeting. Anybody wants a motion to approve those? I will move to approve the meetings from the minutes from the last meeting. I’ll second that. All right. All in favor? Aye. Okay, and the motion is passed. Okay. So I will now open it up. For the public invited to be heard. Each person speaking will be unmuted one at a time when it is your turn to speak. Please state your name and address for the record. You will have three minutes for comment. I will time you and please I’ll interrupt you. If you’re still talking at three minutes. And if you continue to talk, you will be muted. So please go ahead and

Unknown Speaker 1:51
write Brian I’m going to go ahead and ask you to unmute yourself and as the chair stated, please state your name and address for the record and you have three minutes.

Unknown Speaker 2:05
Hi, this is Brian Jeffries 4027 Mulana lane logging on. I’ve read the draft questions posed for the Platte River Power Power Authority that are shown in today’s meeting packet. If that list has already been sent to the Platte River Power Authority, then my comments would follow are moved. If that’s the case, I can stop now. So can you tell me where that list is already been sent or not? Lisa, do you?

Unknown Speaker 2:33
Yeah, the list has already been set. That I’ve got nothing to say thank you. Okay. Then. Or the

Unknown Speaker 2:51
there’s no one else to be from the public who wishes to be heard? Is that true stuff? That is correct. Thank you. Okay. Um, do we have any revisions to the agenda or documents to submit? For the staff?

Unknown Speaker 3:09
Yeah, I have one revision to the agenda. I would like to under items from staff add a letter of support for a do we grant? Great. Okay. I’ll make sure. Okay. We will move on then to general business. Hello, ask board members to please hold their comments and questions until the end of each presentation after the staff has finished presenting. So first up is the US 27 Bus Rapid Transit feasibility study. Jeff butts the foresters are Phil Greenwald. Well, good afternoon.

Unknown Speaker 4:08
Chair and members of the board. Just wanted to let you know that I’ve been trying to get a hold of Jeff bucks, and he is not available at this time. So if you’d like to move on to your other items, we can certainly do that. And I will continue to try to get ahold of Jeff and see if he’s okay. And and see if he needs any assistance getting on to the meeting today. So I apologize. But we cannot track time, Jeff. So if we can move on. That would be wonderful. And then I will let you know when he’s available. Sounds good. Thanks. Well, thank you very much. Okay, Lisa.

Unknown Speaker 4:47
Yeah, sorry about that. Hopefully, everything’s okay. And that wasn’t some sort of miscommunication on our end, but we’ll we’ll circle back with you all if we don’t hear from him today. Okay, so Steph, I could have Have you pull up my presentation, that would be three.

Unknown Speaker 5:10
Alright, so I just wanted to take some time today to give you all a brief update on our Zero Waste waste efforts and get some preliminary feedback on updating the zero waste resolution, which I’ll get into in a minute here. So you can go to the next slide, please. rate, sorry, tech shields. So our sanitation staff write an update on Zero Waste efforts to Council. Back in the earlier part of the year, they identified four main areas of focus, which are education and outreach. And if you hit the right arrow, business, a PDF or as a PowerPoint stuff, I realized I put an animation and forgot to specify that so this is no worries, it is the PowerPoint. Great. So if you hit the right arrow should come up. There we go. Alright, so the main focus in education outreach is the Green Star Schools Program, which we do in partnership with eco cycle and St. Green Valley School districts. For the last couple of years, we have been funding one new school to be added per year and within Longmont city boundaries. And then the St. Mary Valley School District also funds one school that could be anywhere in the district, so may or may not be within one month. And we just increased our budget to add an additional school to that. So now moving forward, there’ll be three schools per year added to the Green Star Schools program. It’s a great comprehensive program that focuses on composting and recycling education and services for the schools. The next is the hard to recycle program. So if you hit the right arrow again, the main focus there is just increasing opportunities within Longmont for hard to recycle materials, the zero waste resolution can hit the right arrow. That’s the main focus that we’ll be talking about today. And then the universal recycling ordinance if you want to hit the radar, harder to do animation, when you’re not doing it yourself, it will largely be a good purchase of that the foundation of the universal recycling ordinance we ordinance we anticipate incorporating into the zero waste resolution. And those are all happening over the next 12 to 18 months. So you can go to the next slide, please. As you all probably know, because we’ve talked about this quite a bit. The the climate action taskforce also had a focus on Zero Waste efforts, particularly on composting. So that was a priority, we will incorporate that into the zero waste resolution, which we’ll talk about more shortly. So you can go there. And then also, waste is a specific focus area within the sustainability plan. We we do have a lot going on in this area. The targets are listed here that are from the sustainability plan. The right arrow, we have some more animation. So we’ve actually met our household trash consumption goal, which is pretty exciting. So we’ll be revisiting that when we update the sustainability plan. If you want to hit the radar again, we’re doing pretty well on the residential waste diversion goal. And I think if you haven’t looked at the time, there we go. So we’re at about 40%. And we have a goal to reach 50% by 2025. So we’re doing pretty well with that we have good participation in our recycling composting programs that help us a lot there. And then we are doing a lot internally, as well as with the commercial sector largely through the Sustainable Business Program. But we still have been working to define baselines in those areas. Next slide, please. This is just a quick overview of all of the strategies around the waste topic that are in the sustainability plan. So you can see focused on composting and recycling waste manager regional waste management work educational opportunities, you’ll see the commercial recycling ordinance in there and hard to recycle materials as well. Next slide.

Unknown Speaker 9:16
So mostly, as I mentioned, we’ll be talking about updating the zero waste resolution today. This is in just an overview of the timeline. So we started this process in May. And what we committed to Council was to have this done in a 12 month timeframe. So anticipating having the final resolution completed by June of 2022. So we reviewed the existing resolution. We’ve been doing some research on examples from other communities put together the draft timeline that you all saw in your packet. And now we’re moving into the stakeholder engagement section which is mostly just getting some high level information. As we’ll talk about on what people want to see included in that resolution. We’ll take it back to council early fall. And then we’ll go through a period of doing some data analysis and additional goal setting. So we really want to build off those goals we already have in the sustainability plan. But hopefully identify some new goals as well. circle back with stakeholders, and then finalize the resolution and bring it to council next year or next summer. And then go through communications process. And we’ll be looking to incorporate that into the Envision and sustainability plan updates as well. Excellent. So this is just very high level, the existing resolution, as you all saw was from 2008, it was it was a pretty good resolution had a lot of stuff in there. These are just the high level components that talked about existing conditions, what the impacts were, why we should care about it, they had some guiding principles included, and then some very high level tactics kind of focus on in there, I’m not going to go through all the details, because you all have that in your packet, you want to go to the next slide. So then looking at revising and updating that resolution, you’ll see similar components around the background, similar things that we would want to be looking at in that area as well, what we want to what we are looking to focus on that would be the primary differences, really incorporating some pretty specific goals that can help guide our work. So looking to the zero waste resolution has kind of being that foundation for zero waste work. So we have our existing sustainability planning goals that I just mentioned. But as we go through this process, we’ll identify if we want, if it makes sense to add additional goals to that as well. And then from the tactic standpoint, we have the same plans, programs, policies, and infrastructure components, but really a focus on stakeholder engagement as well and identifying those equity impacts and community needs. So this time, I’ll go ahead and have Steph pull up the draft outline. And we’ll walk you through that. So you also saw this in the packet. So hopefully, y’all have had a chance to at least digest it a little bit. And while she does that, what I’m what we’re looking for at this point, and unfortunately, Charlie camedia Sue’s our sanitation manager wasn’t able to join us today. But we’re just looking for some very high level feedback on these components that I’ve included here, what might be missing, and then if there’s specific items that you think that we should be considering within those components, and then we’ll flesh those out in detail, especially as we get through the data analysis process, and bring it to you all for further feedback as as this progresses. So we’ll kind of run through here. And then feel free to just holler out if you have questions or comments in each of these sections, and I can kind of we can just I guess we can’t we can’t take notes here. But francy is taking notes separately. So incorporate your comments in here. But that background is just the overarching issue of waste. Why should we care about it? The existing conditions? So we want to talk about what are our statistics that we know currently, our waste volume or diversion rates, we have all those statistics around what the current participation is in our different programs. And the impacts on Longmont. So we talked to you several months ago when we completed the waste lifecycle cost analysis that has some really good detailed impacts from a greenhouse gas and climate action. standpoint. So if there’s other things we want to include there around community impacts as well, we could include that. And then the value proposition is looking at the climate impact community benefits, convenience that comes out of additional programs or whatever it might be, and then really the long term value to the city and really investing in waste diversion efforts and becoming a zero waste community. Before I move on to the next section, I’m sorry stuff. Are there any comments or additions that folks want to make in this section here?

Unknown Speaker 14:08
I had a quick question. Do we have like comparisons like to other communities, maybe model community? For example, I think the target was two pounds per person per day of waist? Do we know how that compares to other communities? Is that ambitious? Is that?

Unknown Speaker 14:25
Yeah, yeah, that’s that’s a great question. Um, that hertz in particular is pretty ambitious, and Longmont is doing pretty well on that. The caveat I will say to that is it’s not standard in the way that that’s being calculated across communities. And so that’s one of the things that we actually want to look at when we update the sustainability plan and we look to revisit that goal is has that moved in terms of best practice and in the way that it’s calculated because it it really depends on what all gets rolled into that particular calculation in order to be To compare that across communities, and at least when we did it initially, there wasn’t a standard. So that’s one of the challenges for sure. And being able to do that comparison, there is also eco cycle did a comparison across all the municipalities within Boulder County and pulled a lot of this information. So we do have some pretty good comparative information, at least across the company.

Unknown Speaker 15:21
So I’m guessing that we would include the way we’re the definition of how we’re going to calculate waste per day per person.

Unknown Speaker 15:31
Yeah, probably not to that level of detail in the resolution, but that when we actually go to increase in revisiting backhaul, yes. Got it. Got it. Thank you. Alright, so we can move on to the goals section. Yes, sir. Yeah, yeah. Sorry. You’ll have to jump in because I can’t see everybody.

Unknown Speaker 15:52
Yeah, I was realizing that as long as you. Um, so um, this might be just a follow up, then Charles. Question, would that the way that we calculate our waste? Is that, is that just looking at the amount of waste that is hauled from our city cans? Like the ones that I put out every week? Or does that include free dump day? And does that include, okay,

Unknown Speaker 16:15
it includes all of the above everything that we can track and we do get information? I would say it’s not going to be the most accurate, but we do get information from our commercial haulers as well. they’re required to put data into a system that we countywide system that we can at least have some general information about that. Yeah. Great. Thanks.

Unknown Speaker 16:37
Yeah. Thanks for this discussion. What’s still not clear to me, does this number also include, say, some of the recycled materials that end up not getting recycled, they just end up getting thrown away? Is that something that can be tracked?

Unknown Speaker 16:49
Yes. Not on a on we have to go through specifically and every and Charlie would be able to tell you what the frequency I don’t know what frequency This is. But we do go through a waste audit every so often to give ourselves an idea of how much recyclable or composted material is going into the landfill. So that just gives us kind of a ballpark idea of that, but it’s not something that’s tracked on an ongoing basis. Yeah, but that’s a critical piece of information for us. Okay, great. The goals section, we’ll pull that back a step. Thank you. And I see Jeff joined us. So that’s great. Well, I’ll hand it back to him when I’m done with this. So as I mentioned, I just dropped in the existing goals. And then I do think that we’ll probably be looking at additional goals, particularly, as I mentioned, in the city operations and the commercial side of things, our goals are just to increase diversion in those areas. But I think we really want to be able to add through that data analysis piece, some more specific, actual targets to that section there. And then the last section is the tactics. So as I mentioned this, the update to the resolution really focuses a lot more on the stakeholder engagement side, and really understanding those equity issues and considerations. And what are the communities we know the area of multifamily units is a big area of focus for folks, because it’s been really hard to get service recycling and composting services, to folks that are living in apartment complexes and whatnot. So that’s an area that we’ll want to look at. And then that high level approach in terms of do we want to establish some specific plans, like a solid waste management plan or a zero waste plan, a number of different programs, including partnerships with folks like eco cycle and others, policies, so we can look at code updates, and then that’s where that universal recycling ordinance would come in. And what that does is essentially require everyone to have recycling service to their so all commercial entities and stuff would have recycling available. And then C and D. Sorry, I should have spelled that out and accurate. And then but that’s construction and demolition, which is a huge, huge waste stream, and from a volume and weight standpoint, has a pretty big impact. And then the infrastructure piece and looking at partnerships and regionalization of our waste infrastructure. So that’s pretty much what we’re looking at. Are there any other comments kind of in that section that people want to add or have questions about? Okay, great. Well, we will, we’ll circle back with actually, if you want to bring up that the presentation stuff. I have one last slide because our next step is really the stakeholder engagement piece. We know there’s a good handful of folks that have a lot of interest in this area so I I jotted down the folks that we’ve come up with but definitely if you have other people that we are groups that we should be considering, please let us know. There you go. So obviously we have a lot of stuff from across the organization that are impacted in different ways that we want to make sure engaged and have different needs and and considerations in this area. You all the equitable Climate Action Team sustainable resilient Longmont has a zero waste committee that we’ll be touching base with the business community will be working with for needs to understand what are the needs in that area of the sustainability coalition, the Boulder County Resource Conservation Board, which is a group with representation from across the municipalities in the county that looks at these issues as well. Really from a regional standpoint, and then looking at engaging the community brother broader, more broadly through are engaged on one page. Are there other groups that you all are connected to or that you know of that we should add to this list from a stakeholder engagement standpoint? Bernice?

Unknown Speaker 21:23
Lisa, this is very nice. I think we should also engage howlers now was to get both eco cycle Waste Connections.

Unknown Speaker 21:31
Yep. Perfect. Great. Thank you. All right. Anybody else? Great. Okay. Well, as I mentioned, as we get into the more substantive details of this, hopefully we will be bringing it back to you all as well. And with that, I am going to hopefully hand it over to Jeff.

Unknown Speaker 22:07
Okay. Jeff, if you are ready, we would love to hear an update on the the 287 Rapid Transit feasibility study. Jeff, are you there? Jeff is unmuted, but I do not see. I cannot hear him either. So I’m here. Can you hear me? Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 22:52
we just can’t see you. Yeah, you can’t see me. I’m getting failed to start video camera settings. Okay, so the host asked me started my camera. My camera is turned on and it’s green. So I don’t know what is going on here. I’m sorry, I’ve zoomed. This is why I was late. I was having issues. So my apologies. We may just let me try switching some cameras around here. Can you see what’s on the screen? Jeff? I see you Phil I see. See, I see Phil greenwall There’s your name but I can see what’s on the screen. If you want to move forward with the presentation I can give the presentation. sorry that I’m unable to share my video. Zoom has just given me every problem of the day so far, I guess trying to connect so I’ll just move forward without video if that’s okay. appreciate all of you allowing me to be here with in spend some time with you. This is going to be my first time really working through the presentation not having the control. So hopefully it works. This is really designed to be a conversation to hear from you all as a part of our process for designing bus rapid transit, long 287 additional treatments. And so I guess just one thing to note on sustainability and here you talk about waste reduction. It’s kind of an old world of mine in college I actually got recycling going at the university like full recycling is the chair of the urban or the environmental awareness club. So I was so I love the work you guys do and others place in our fort. So appreciate you having me here. Talk about 287 today. So if we can go to the next slide, please. Actually, let’s go to number four, if we can move ahead to number four. One more. Sorry, here we go. So these I sorry about the train, I live in Longmont. So the train is driving by right now. And the reason why I have these scattered, we’re taking the public presentation really, that we gave, and then trying to tailor to each group. So each group understands and just want to have this be a visual aid, more so than a presentation. But there is a little bit of upfront stuff here that I want to walk through. So first of all, this this explains the county’s transportation Master Plan, which shows prioritizing the movement of people over cars, advancing the Northwest area mobility study, and then working with our partners such as Longmont is been a great partner. And of course funding. Next, Next slide, please. And so this shows the north northwest area mobility study, you can see on here how there’s 119. And if you need to zoom in, you can hit control, and then zoom in on your mouse. And usually that allows you to zoom in if you need to see closer, neat trick. But you can see the network of bus rapid transit that is planned for the area, the yellow line is 119, which is the most furthest along I guess. And then the red line is seven, which is the second. And now this orange line right down the middle is the really the spine of the entire network. And when you think about sustainability, having sustainable mobility options helps tie right in there, you know if people get out of their cars, and if we find a way to get people into into a bus instead, then that will save, save some trips. So next slide or save some carbon. And I just want to acknowledge all of our partners that are working on this. And then if you could advance to slides, please.

Unknown Speaker 27:23
And I want to note that this is in English and Spanish when we gave the presentation originally, there’s an option at the bottom for people to be able to change from English and Spanish. So we had live so that’s that’s why the Spanish is on here. If you look to the map on the right, you can see that there’s two areas, there’s a blue line that extends all the way from Fort Collins down to Denver. And that is where there is service right now. There’s transit service connecting those areas right now. And then when the middle from 66, down to 36. You can see there’s a second line which is a gold color. And that is the area we’re also looking at Capital treatments. And so what can we do for service from Fort Collins to Denver and then what capital treatments can we make along the way here in the middle and then if you can advance one more slide. Here we go. These these are these are the big issues that we’ve been hearing people talk about when we are in our public meetings and through surveys. These are the major intersections that are issues and just major problems Arapahoe. probably no surprise there. And then South boulder really nothing in Longmont that I see which is good for you all except for the pedestrian friendliness, something that has been coming up consistently is it’s not pedestrian friendly. And the highway divides the community including in Longmont, of course, there’s east side and west side which is divided. And so now if we can move along to the let’s see here, next slide. And so what I want to show here is that of our survey respondents which was around 77, there was strong support for our for moving forward with these treatments and things. So this is where I want to pause. Sometimes I do mentimeter here. Sometimes I don’t. And this time we’re not because it’s recorded, but I wanted to take a moment and ask you all what are the top things we should can center when planning transit enhancements along to 87. So this is a moment for discussion. If you feel comfortable, just wait, how can we help tie into your sustainability goals? And what should What should we really be considering?

Unknown Speaker 30:23
Jeff, can I ask a question? What’s the timeframe that you’re thinking about implementing this plan?

Unknown Speaker 30:31
Yeah, great, excellent question. And so this study itself is going to go into q3 of this year, so August, September, potentially October. And then we’re going to start a second phase of the study, which is going to put safety as the primary emphasis. And so we safety, multimodal mobility, and environmental, those are gonna be the three things we look at. And when we look at environmental habitat, sensitive areas, make sure we don’t just serve those. And then also, if there’s, and we’re include stakeholder engagement, and bilingual stakeholder engagement throughout the process. So we may also include traffic signals, we may not in that second phase, and then that phases will be a year to 18 months. So

Unknown Speaker 31:25
that’s the study. But but it’s a study, and I’m I imagine that depending upon what the outcomes are of that study, in terms of, you know, what, what plan comes out that there’ll be implemented, you know, the implementation would depend upon, you know, how much what is needed in terms of construction, or what is needed in terms of Hill, adding bus service, etc. But is this something we’re looking for three years out five years out,

Unknown Speaker 31:56
I think it’s what it seems to be coming to the top is there’s gonna be a variety. So 119 is going to be one large project at once. And this is probably going to be taking advantage of projects as they rise to the surface. So for example, if there’s a intersection reconfiguration within Longmont, that’s already an existing one, then the recommendations of this study can be implemented down in Broomfield, they already have some turning lanes on the outside. So that’s just new paint. So that could be something within a year. And some transit key huge jumps, if you’re aware of what those are. So the transit is able to bypass the bus is able to bypass everybody, and then jump to the front of the line. That may happen in certain areas quicker than other areas. So there will be some things that will probably happen within I don’t want to be overly optimistic. What was in two years? Yesh, who should be able to start to see some changes happen in areas and then for the full scale. When’s it done? And when are the stations built and everything I I would optimistically say 10 years. But that’s, that’s very optimistic. I would say 10, maybe 20 years for the full build out. This is the third priority. So we have 119. That still needs to be built. And then we have seven and then we have this one. Got it. Thank you. You’re welcome. So implementation is important and being able to see stuff on the ground. Are there other things that we should consider? Are there other questions?

Unknown Speaker 33:52
Yeah, thanks, Jeff. I did have a question about how you plan on making the buses faster. I noticed that you said something about adding another lanes for the buses. Are you planning on? I mean, are you looking into expanding say the width of 287? Or are you planning on having the buses go on the side of the road like they do on us? 36?

Unknown Speaker 34:14
Can we skip to slide 30, please. And then share the screen once you’re there. If you can just jump to 30 or maybe you have to scroll through them all.

Unknown Speaker 34:35
There we go. So So this, this is an example of what we have at nyuad. We’re not saying that we are going to do this at an eyewash station. But we’re these are the different types of treatments we’re looking at. So this is how it exists. Next slide please. This would be the outside option, which is the most likely option. And so you would have huge jumps and maybe scenarios with some bus only where it makes sense, but so outside and then next slide, please, inside. So these are really the two different treatments. So if you want to go to the previous slide, and then again the next slide, so this is where we’re at. So if we stay on the outside, there really is less widening of the roadway, if you but the pedestrian has a long ways to cross. And if you go with the center running, it’s it needs more right of way, which is of course difficult, but you could give a pedestrian refuge as well. So it kind of breaks up the street in the middle. So help. Okay, great. Excellent. Job. Yeah. So I was wondering, you know,

Unknown Speaker 35:54
last year, I think it was maybe early or late winter or something like that. Governor polis kind of asked us to harass the RTD to re examine the train service expansion from Denver out to Boulder and Longmont. And that whole area, tried to push up the timeframe, I was wondering how changes in kind of the planning for rail systems would impact planning for the bus rapid transit systems at all. Or if that might change priorities.

Unknown Speaker 36:26
You know, it’s all designed to work as a network together. And so none of these things are exclusive to one another. It’s not that we are building bus rapid transit in place of the train. And it’s not that the train would replace the bus rapid transit. The idea is to build a network that works seamlessly together. So somebody could take the train, for example, to Broomfield, get off at Broomfield and then be able to head up to Lafayette on the bus. So that’s that. So all of it work together as a network solution. So every piece of it builds upon it. Yep. help answer your question. Excellent. Okay.

Unknown Speaker 37:13
So Jeff, oh, sorry. So I am so wonder that is one of the reasons I was asking you about timeframe is because I’m, I’m just wondering about technology, as it advances and there, there could be some interesting technologies that come out in the next 10 or 15 years or sooner, that could impact you know, some of these things. And, you know, this is, this is one that I had, there’s it’s kind of controversial, but the autonomous systems and autonomous self driving vehicles could come out. And, you know, we’ve seen even over this last year, I, I’m not sure what the statistics are locally, but ridership is probably down significantly during the pandemic. And, you know, a lot of people bought, bought used cars and things like that, in order to be able to transport themselves because they, they didn’t want to ride buses during the pandemic, and it’s going to take take some time to get back to higher ridership. But, you know, there’s a possibility that if autonomous systems come out, you know, self driving cars, that services, you know, similar to Uber and Lyft, etc, but not with, you know, no human drivers could come out and make, you know, transportation per, you know, per mile. For those kinds of services, very inexpensive, and you can imagine compete with municipal transportation, is that something that comes up at all in these in the thinking of these, these kinds of long term plans.

Unknown Speaker 38:51
So thinking about how we can work with TNCs, transportation network carriers, I think is the name of them. Over lift is something that we consider, we also do consider how to what autonomy is going to do. And there’s really two different types of autonomy, you have automatic, which is more of a expert AI, where the experts decide every if then scenario, and then you have neural network, which is Tesla and comma AI. And so it depends on which one of those you go with, I think, and it’s a crystal ball. We are heard technology’s important, and to consider technology for the traffic signals, for sure, if we could get to a place where we could have autonomous buses that would, that that would reduce the cost of running the buses. And so I think that all those you know When we have full autonomy, we won’t even need traffic signals anymore is what Steve title tells me. He’s a traffic engineer. So if you know, we’re talking about the 510 year timeline with this project, and those things are probably going to slowly incorporate into the next 30 to 50 years, we’re going to be seeing more and more of them. And so we’ll just see how it develops and, and where to incorporate transportation. Phil, you have your hand raised?

Unknown Speaker 40:30
I didn’t want to take I don’t want to take anybody’s time. I wanted the chair to be sure that that was okay. My apologies. But I just wanted to jump in and just talk about you know, there’s the autonomous vehicle, kind of utopia. And then there’s the autonomous vehicle kind of dystopia, which is that feeling of you know, I think Jeff mentioned that the zero occupancy vehicle that there’s nobody in it, but it’s driving somewhere to go pick somebody up, and it’s taking space on the road. So, you know, same thing with Uber and Lyft. I mean, it’s a one person driving. And so we just have to be careful that the idea is, especially when we’re talking to a sustainability advisory board, is, we don’t see that there’s going to be there’s going to be a need for much more roadway widening, especially in Longmont. And so, the idea is how do we get people on mass transit? You know, regardless of the pandemic, I understand, that was a thing that that really affected, and it was really all sad to hear the CDC come out and say, avoid public transportation. And so we need to kind of move on and get to the next level of how do we, how do we deal with a pandemic type situation and still be able to use our mass transportation, because it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s extremely critical that we move people in all the variety modes that we possibly can and not limit two people to a personal, you know, private vehicle, usually driven by one person, quite frankly. So that’s what we’re trying to move toward here. And, you know, on both the 119 in the US 36 example, and I believe on, on state highway seven, we’re really looking to expand it so that vehicles can also be told, so to Ll Ed told, so that, if you do want to drive alone, if that’s your if that’s your, if that’s your preference, if that’s your your, what you’ve chosen for your for your ride that day, and you’re willing to pay a price for your trip reliability, you can get into these lanes as well. And I i’m not saying that’s going to happen on 27. But I’m also not saying it’s not going to happen. 27 we don’t know. So that’s a reason for this study as well. And, and, and my apologies, I’ve taken a lot of your time. So I want to turn it back over to the board for comments. Yeah, thank you, Adam. And then Polly.

Unknown Speaker 42:50
Yeah, thanks. I just wanted to change gears quickly and look at not the transportation itself, but rather the transit centers. Does this project encompass the Walmart parking ride and doing anything to that? I know there’s a facility in South one month, but I’m not sure at what level it’s being used

Unknown Speaker 43:10
with the modeling. So we are heavily dependent on the great work that city staff has done to prepare for this. There’s been just a lot of excellent work done. And so we are incorporating those and we are letting Longmont take the lead, but because it’s long gone, you know. And so we’re we’re incorporating those into this, but and maybe making some suggested modifications, but we’re showing the stations down there and then trying to figure out the speeds. Phil, do you have anything you want to add to that? Around the transit centers?

Unknown Speaker 43:53
Yeah, just to let you know, I mean, we’ve been working with RTD for a long time now to try to figure out something to do with that station area. The building’s obviously dilapidated and needs lots of work. They still have a pretty good garage in there with a carwash with a bus wash and, and fueling facility and a lot of things that can really help. They’re talking about being overcapacity at their boulder maintenance facility right now, which is out there on 33rd and are in Arapaho, basically. So we’ve talked to them about maybe, you know, putting this back into service, but keeping our park and ride and then we’d want to do some really good pedestrian connections across 287 across Main Street, in order to facilitate those buses running quicker in front of that station, and being able to get people on and off the buses comfortably and safely.

Unknown Speaker 44:45
Great. Thanks, Phil. And, more broadly, we’re including the station’s area toolkit, which we’re just developing which has a lot of placemaking elements to it, mostly to make it comfortable for people to be at these stations and around them. And there may be some stations that have two or three elements and at least a bench and covering. And then there may be some stations that have 10 elements or so and so us outside of Longmont and something that could be broadly applied. So when you talk about transit centers, we’re looking sort of at the stations themselves outside of Longmont, and inside along my phone wants to use it just the toolkit we’re developing alongside it. Thanks, Polly.

Unknown Speaker 45:46
Okay, so, um, since you brought this up, Adam, actually, city council, especially, particularly, john Peck has been working on a transit center at first and main, which would be the buses. But well, we hope to let the light rail would be coming in between Kaufman and main, and at First Avenue, and RTD has, we have $18 million that we can use for that we’ve been buying up land to provide that and they were going to give us a clock tower. And they said, No, we need a building because it snows and because you know, every other place has an actual place to park, a place to go inside, grab a drink, and sit down and whatever, you know, so that has been going on for at least the last eight years. It’s slow because of our TT. But you know, so what I wanted to say is in regard to autonomous vehicles, if you have vehicles on the road, it doesn’t matter who’s driving and they’re on the road. And the part, the reason we have so much traffic is because we keep making the roads wider and bigger. And we need to get them off the road into a discreet form of travel, which is what light rail is. and everywhere else that I’ve ever lived and traveled. Everybody does take mass transit, because it’s easier. It’s cheaper, it’s more efficient. And as Mr. Buggs has said that the idea is that you connect a series of different kinds of transport from subways, to, to light rail to maybe a bit, then you know, the last mile or whatever it is, of us, or a taxi or a bike or whatever. But you have to get people around in a massive way first. And if you’re that we’ve we’re going to keep on talking about our own little vehicles. We’re never going to get anywhere, we can’t afford to build these roads. And we’re destroying Colorado by building more and wider and all these roads that we don’t need. If we just use mass transit more. We had better mass transit in 1880. In terms of trains than we have now. We had better bus systems for getting around Colorado in 1972. I could get on a bus in Denver, and get out to Meeker. I can’t do that anymore, I would have to go. I mean, I’m just saying this is we’ve gone backwards, we need to actually go forward to mass transit and understand that this is the only way sustainable sustainably we can get out of the traffic situations and the building of roads and constantly trying to maintain those roads with no gas tax anymore. I mean, because if you know who’s going to how are we going to finance that if we don’t have a gas tax because we’re using electricity. So I just think there are many, many things to consider about autonomous vehicles being the solution to all of our problems. Thanks for that Polly a second what she said. Charles?

Unknown Speaker 49:38
Yeah, so So a couple of questions I am. So I commute by bicycle between Longmont and Boulder. And when the weather’s not good, I take the bus. And so I have quite a bit of experience, you know, 13 years of experience coming back forth and I know this is 287 and not going on the diagonal. But I think there’s a lot of similar liberties and some things, just, I think to be aware of is making sure you know, I’m not sure what the details are, but making sure that that when pedestrians have the potential to come into contact with traffic as they go from parking rides, for example to the station, that there, there’s either a way, no safe way that they can get across, you show that station nyuad and 287. Seems to me I’ve read several articles and newspaper over the last few years, where, you know, there seems to be some fatal accidents in those those areas. And so that’s just motorcycles and cars and trucks and things like that. But yeah, so I was really happy to see that safety was a priority there. I diagnose was, almost seems like there’s almost no safety features to travel along the diagonal between boulder and Longmont, especially at intersections. It’s I don’t know who designed it, but it probably wasn’t a cyclist. But I would hope that whatever is done along the 287 corridor that there’s, you know, that there’s some precautions that are taken in terms of the design to make sure that it’s it’s just safe for anyone who’s using that corridor for transportation, cyclists, pedestrians, etc. Because if you have buses, and cars and cyclists and pedestrians on that, basically in the same surfaces, and there’s no separation, that, you know, fatalities are tragedies that be great to design to avoid those.

Unknown Speaker 51:45
Thank you. And I just wanted to make a note that that is the most important issue to Boulder County, and to me personally, and probably to fill in to every transportation planet or an engineer. When there’s a fatality that’s not just a life, it’s a family, it’s a friend. So it’s extremely important. And not just for people driving their cars, but also for people walking their bicycles. It’s so important that in this phase, we’ve decided to do a second phase that is going to highlight safety as its primary feature, and safety and multimodal mobility, meaning, you know, how do we make it safe for people to walk and bike and drive and predictable and get to the bus stops and around the bus stop. So thank you for thank you for raising that. I just like the time check. I have two more questions that I want to get through. I don’t want to rush you all, but I don’t want to. I don’t want to overtake your time. I just have two more and just want to make sure that we have time to get to them. Please. You want me to move on? Yeah, Yes, I think so. Okay, great. Then thank you all for your questions and your insights and and the discussion around autonomous vehicles really interesting. And Phil mentioned the dystopia. You could have a world where it’s just back to back cars driving around trying to avoid paying for parking. The next question that I have, and this may be a vote and unofficial vote, it’s you know, I just want to get people’s ideas here. It’s not the question is one seat ride to Denver versus more frequent service. And so let’s say that you could do I see Bernice has her hand up. So I’m sure want to get Yep,

Unknown Speaker 53:50
I was wondering this idea. If it’s possible to have like food trucks next to the parking lots, then we create business opportunities and you know, people can have attack or whatever food they want while waiting the bus. So these will also, you know, contribute to economic development for for that.

Unknown Speaker 54:15
Awesome, great idea. And that is something that we could include maybe in the stations or a toolkit. So thank you so much for raising that up. And then there’s the equity side of it and other stuff, too. And I see Lisa has her hand up now.

Unknown Speaker 54:31
Yeah, just quickly. Kind of piggybacking a little bit off of what Bernice mentioned just from that also creates, I think greater safety for people that may have been involved in some RTD projects in the past in the Denver area where there is light rail stations that are very solitary located under like overpasses and things like that and just thinking from a safety standpoint of who feel safe to be at those places, you know, after dark and whatnot. But if there’s specifically economic activity and things like that, that are, you know, drawing people when there’s more people around, that also creates a greater sense of safety for people to be able to take advantage of those opportunities.

Unknown Speaker 55:16
These are great things to include in the stations or toolkit. I feel like we need to send it to you for review for ideas as soon as it’s closer up to the end. 100% agree. Great, great ideas. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 55:35
Yeah, just really quickly, I want to also say that I have commuted between Longmont and boulder via bus, I’ve also taken the bus along to 87. And something important to me is accessibility. So that is being able to get to the bus stop. And the way I do that is by using a bike. And so I like to know if you can include ways to store the bike on the bus, similar to how RTD has that in the front of the bus, but also having the possibility to put it under the bus or somewhere in the bus if the front were to be full.

Unknown Speaker 56:05
So we’re looking at multiple options. Right now. RTD runs the coaches which are smooth, but they load slow and they unload slow, and there’s limited by capacity. We’re also looking at Arctic’s those bendy buses. And you know, one option with those is that you can bring the bicycle right in side of the bus and see just roll right on and then you can hang your bike up, I’m not saying that we’re going to do that. I’m just saying it’s something that has been discussed at a small level. But addressing bikes is something that definitely needs to be done. And another thing that I’ve heard is when people are five foot five, and 115 pounds, and they’re trying to pull it off of there, and they’re feeling rushed, that it’s really difficult. So I think I think you raise a really good point. And then as far as the bike parking goes around the area, that’s already that’s included in the stationary toolkit, and it’s something that Boulder County has done quite a bit of and I believe Boulder County is has some agreements with Longmont and a couple of those as well. So there’s those there’s the long term bike parking, the bike shelters, which I believe are coded. And then there is the short term bike parking, which is just like a bike stapler, you rack right outside. And so yeah, bike parking. That’s something I think that we’ve got a pretty good handle on and just need to implement. The bigger question is the Yeah, putting the bike on the bus or under the bus or in the bus? And what are the load times? And what are the convenience factors and things like that? So thank you for raising that question. And then routes to it as well. So, yeah. Okay. I see another hand up.

Unknown Speaker 58:04
So Jeff, do we do we know what the what’s the How much is the cost in terms of of a bus? How much is the cost for, you know, the equipment itself versus the labor for having, you know, a bus driver? I just because because in some ways, the frequency question to me is, you know, kind of depends on that that ratio. Because if if you could have smaller buses that were more fully occupied and operating much more often, that would be really ideal, but it requires until we have autonomous versus more labor. So, you know, you ask the question about frequency, that, you know, like, I take the, when the weather’s not good, I take the J and that bus basically comes every hour. So it’s like, and you miss it, and then you’re like, Okay, I’m about to walk home, and then come back to the bus stop. So, being more frequent, I think would help ridership and everything but I know that that frequency obviously affects costs, both because you need more equipment, but especially the labor of having extra bus drivers

Unknown Speaker 59:11
will let’s say we have 100 service hours, right? We can take those 100 service hours and we could drive right into Denver, and then provide 30 minute headways. You know, we’re say we have a set number of service hours 100 is maybe not the the right but we have a set number of service hours that we do. And you can go all the way into Denver, and you have 30 minute headways with those service hours. Or you can go from Longmont to Broomfield back to Longmont so instead of continuing on to Denver, you come back to Longmont, which then increases the frequency of bus that you have, but you have to transfer and so you’re dependent on, you know that other bus be in there. And it’s great when it’s there. But it’s awful when it leaves right when you arrive. So that’s, that’s a great question. And so that’s what I’d like to talk about now is one seat rides into Denver. And let’s just say hypothetically, you would have a 30 minute ride into Denver, and these are hypothetical numbers, or he would have 30 minute headways into Denver just for him for this exercise. Not modeled or anything. Or, you know, instead of riding that bus into Denver, you bring the bus back up to Longmont, and you’re able to use those service hours tighter and get 15 minute headways. Which one of those is more important. Having the frequent service where you don’t have to have the map or or you know, the ones he rides, he just get on and go. I see two participants have their hands raised, so I will let the chair Yeah, go ahead, Jim.

Unknown Speaker 1:01:09
Yeah, I mean, I think that to me, you know, so I, I live in Longmont and I work in Boulder, and I’ve done the J and the bolt combinations. For a lot of the time that I’ve lived, there is a bike back and forth. And the thing that I always think about is that that question depends on the time of day you’re talking about, you know, I think the Jay is a perfect example where it it in terms of where I can get on the J and where the J dropped me off, drops me off, it’s convenient. But it also gives you an entire tour of the Front Range along the way, stopping at a lot of places, and it doesn’t come very often. And it seems to me that like uh, you know, something like that, where we know that there’s a lot of people that live in Longmont that work at CU or downtown Boulder. So we’re going to have door, you know, single seat service during, so that people can get to work at normal working times and get home after normal working times. That That makes sense. But then in the the other time where maybe I’m going to Denver because I want to go to a Rockies game or something like that, it’s a little bit more of a, you know, having to having to change a mode of transportation in Broomfield or something is isn’t really a big deal. To me. It’s the the daily stuff that I think is where, you know, the commutes that people are we’re trying to get people to do their daily commuting, it seems like that’s the biggest impact is to do their daily commuting and something besides a private car.

Unknown Speaker 1:02:44
And once he right is important for the daily community and is what you’re saying?

Unknown Speaker 1:02:49
Well, I mean, I, I think that I think that being able to get from, you know, like the J you know, the J for 23rd in Longmont to the first stop at CU is like over an hour and a half. And and you know if I that’s like I can bike that distance in less time. And and if I drive my personal car, it’s about 3035 minutes. I live in Laurel North Longmont so so if if there were well timed connections, maybe I would care so much. But to me, it’s getting that time down for the regular stuff that is important. And whether or not you know and it seems like if there are ways that we know a lot of you know a ton of people who I think it’s something like 700 cu employees live in Longmont but something around that. I don’t know where I heard that number but it’s it’s around that number and if you think about most of them, probably most of us probably drive our cars. So maybe if there’s a way to do a single seat thing that that takes takes these big bites out of you know the people that live in Longmont but work at maybe the federal state, I don’t know somewhere else. It seems like there’s ways to take big bites out of it with single seat service that doesn’t operate all day, but really targets those commuting times. Our jargon we use this service patterns and service Yeah, like the LX that takes a while. But you say Phil interlining interlining right. Yeah. That’s great. I saw there was another hand up not sure who that was. I think it was taken down. Okay.

Unknown Speaker 1:04:40
And, and real quick, just that what just a second what Jim was saying. The weird thing with the J is it’s almost like a it’s it starts as a local henna acts like a local then it turns into a regional. And so if you’re trying to get like a regional service and you’re on the north side of Longmont You’d have to go through the local kind of aspect of it for half an hour to get to the south southwest part of Longmont.

Unknown Speaker 1:05:11
And, and like Charles said, if you if you happen to miss it, the it actually stops right outside of my building here. And it’s like I can either leave work a little bit earlier than I’m supposed to and catch it, or I can stay at work a lot longer than I want to and catch it. But either way, it’s, you know, by the time I get on that till the time I get home, it’s approaching two hours because of the bus and the other connections, which, which is a big deterrent, a second to take, unfortunately.

Unknown Speaker 1:05:42
So there were definitely needs to be worked with making sure that the network’s are aligning well, and that the buses are coming. And hopefully these treatments that we put in makes the bus more predictable. I think one issue that we deal with right now and particularly on the LD is that it could take you 30 minutes to get to Broomfield, it could take you 47 minutes to get to Broomfield and so we’re hoping to help make these more predictable, which could help make those transfers more predictable. And so what I’m hearing from you all is that the network is really important to use that network and be able to have those transfers, but during peak times, to have have those ones he rides available to major destinations.

Unknown Speaker 1:06:26
Yeah, and I know that I’m talking a lot, but I just I’m, and I’m sure you guys already do this. I don’t want to I don’t want to be condescending and saying this. But I’d be very curious to knowing, you know, if you if I did, if I drew a line of everybody’s commute from Longmont or to Loma in a day, it seems like there would be these big groupings of places people are heading at roughly the same time together. And I’ve I’ve complained that I work for cu and I’ve complained to see you every time they send out transit service about like, why aren’t you organizing a bus that goes from eighth and Kauffman to see you and gets us here to start a workday? at eight o’clock? There’ll be if you know, you could do that and a half hour? Everybody would want to take it? No,

Unknown Speaker 1:07:11
I think that i think that i think that’s in the plans. Actually, with what That’s great.

Unknown Speaker 1:07:16
That’s great to hear. Because I it seems like we could do a lot by targeting some of these, like, the, you know, like the big hubs, maybe Phil can speak more to I was gonna say, though it might be might be very beneficial to this group, if we send you out the plans for the bus rapid transit service along 119. Because, you know, the J, the J bus goes away, there’s more direct service to see you. I think it would really benefit this group to see that. So I’ll send it through. Lisa, and we’ll get it out to you all. Thanks. That’s wonderful. Thank you so much.

Unknown Speaker 1:07:51
And that’s that’s, that’s one of the first improvements has been worked on, is those types of things and trying to build that network. Any other discussion on frequency of service versus once he writes, anybody have any other opinions that we haven’t heard from or other ideas or?

Unknown Speaker 1:08:17
Bernice? And, Jeff, before I forget, I don’t know if within them bilingual feedback that you guys presented. You got any, any comments about or especially people of color living in weld County? And how do you know, they don’t know enough? public transportation. I know a lot of Latino workers leaving Firestone Frederick. So hopefully after this project is successful, the will create opportunities to collaborate with one country even creating more options for those communities living in diced,

Unknown Speaker 1:08:59
thank you better and he say there’s another project 52 Colorado 52 we’re working on a planning study for that and transit is being brought up along 52. And so maybe we could have something Connect over there. There’s also been discussion around extending 119 we come up with service provider boundaries, once we get outside of there. And so for example, to get over to 119 Longmont would either need to annex their city and provide all the services and you know, it’s not sustainable or good idea or the voters are need to prove it and they want it and so are we can look for another provider. So I guess when we are looking at weld County, we’re mostly looking along 52 and I will also say that something else is that to look at is c.is working on Outrider through weld county that starts in Greeley and then I believe stops in either Hudson or Firestone, one of those two and then and then continues over into Boulder County. So let’s see, dot Outrider weld county would be sort of the Google term there. So thank you for that input. That’s really important. And

Unknown Speaker 1:10:32
yeah, appreciate it.

Unknown Speaker 1:10:37
Thank you. Jeff, I just had a brief question about accessibility, are you also doing anything to ensure equal access to the public transportation, I’m thinking of things like making sure there’s some amount of affordable housing near the transit centers, and things like that. So housing is a hot topic

Unknown Speaker 1:10:57
that we don’t talk about. As this as transportation planners so much, especially with the county, I think there’s probably more leeway within the city. And it’s up to the individual cities, I suppose, is what I should say, when we talk about this, when we are planning this route. Yeah, that’s a great idea. You know, in, in the perfect world, you would have fast transit, and you would have, you know, mixed income apartments around there. We’re using existing zoning for different areas, like Lafayette and Broomfield and Longmont does have some good ideas. And maybe Phil has some stuff that he would like to add on that.

Unknown Speaker 1:11:40
Just really quickly we do work, we have been actually going through a pretty elaborate and aggressive rezoning process. Along this whole corridor, Main Street is really seen as the best place to redevelop these kinds of apartments and the higher density, because we do have the existing infrastructure. And we do have those kind of, you know, the transit lines are there, we just need to enhance them and make them better. And you know, what Jeff is talking about? leads us to that next step of making them better. So we are working aggressively to allow the zoning that will, will will will incentivize people to build higher and more dense, densely along these corridors but not need more roadways to get around.

Unknown Speaker 1:12:28
And I guess, thanks, thanks, Phil, for for that, and upzoning logmar. It’s great. I’ve really enjoyed living here. One thing that the county is doing Boulder County housing, Human Services, I believe they’re called over on Kauffman, there is that large crane that you can see up in the air near downtown. And that is going to be I believe, around 73 units. And those are going to be I think, mixed income. So I think there go from Studio up to two, maybe three bedroom apartments in there. And so that’s something that Boulder County is doing where we can to provide that housing, but the zoning is really important. Paulie, I

Unknown Speaker 1:13:20
see you have your hand raised, I want to make a real quick comment on I’m curious about kiosks, ways to buy tickets, I find that buying a ticket to get on the bus is it’s difficult. There aren’t kiosks at every bus stop, where I can use use a card, if I don’t have exact change. There’s, I can’t get change. And and there’s no way to pay electronically on the bus. For those of us who don’t have the advantage of an eco passcard, who really value transportation, I’m curious if there’s plans in the works to to make it more accessible.

Unknown Speaker 1:14:12
So there are several different options. Thank you for bringing up those details. This is this is why I I think it’s valuable to come speak all of you. And this is why I appreciate it is to get those very fine grained details. Like the exact change, or you put into 20 you’re paying 20 bucks. So these these are the types of things that are really important to know. So thank you, thank you for for doing that. RTD is moving more towards mobile ticketing and making sure that you can have the tickets in advance. One issue with the mobile ticketing is cash payers and people and unbanked. And so how can you manage that and so having the kiosks up at the front We have a couple of different areas that we’re talking about that we’re looking at within the stations area toolkit. And this is just very broad. And I’m going to make a comment on ticket vending machines right now because they have a pulled up. So give change for cash pay. Okay, so I’ve just added that comment, thank you. But we’ve we’ve talked about it, we’re very broadly, on the prepayment stuff, you can go all the way up to fare zones, which is on the you know, most built up panda side of things where you would have to pay to get into the station, and maybe you would scan your ticket your card or put money in and get money out and get a ticket and then you walk in, and then everybody inside there is waiting for the bus that’s on an extreme end are things that infill This is probably new to you, because this isn’t the stationary toolkit, which we’re having circulated yet. And then our things are a prepayment. Meaning that we could either use electronic smart cards, cell phone base stuff, as I mentioned, or the ticket vending machines with receipts, and then you use that receipt or a combination of those. But I think I think the important part that I’m really hearing from you is that they give exact jeans and or use a card is the most important.

Unknown Speaker 1:16:38
Yeah, using a card would be some sort of electronic would be just so valuable to like I have to go to the ATM and buy something at the gas station so that I can choose it. It’s not

Unknown Speaker 1:16:52
convenient. It’s not a good way to attract writers. So thanks. Hey, you know give change what a what a phenomenon, huh? Yeah. And I guess yeah, anything else about that? You know, I mean, paint on the bush. We like just completely get rid of payment on the bus, or wipe my phone or give a car. But Polly has ideas and so does Adam. Better. Nisa has her hand raised.

Unknown Speaker 1:17:31
I just do that for seniors and people who are still struggle with that digital divide. We should keep cash available. I’m sorry, Polly. You Yeah. Cash is good. As long as you can get change with change. Yeah, no Cobra divorce here. Other people had Paulie or someone had a

Unknown Speaker 1:17:57
well, I was just gonna Well, I forgot what I was coming. Oh, two things. I’m glad you brought that up Kate. Because you know, the Bay Area Rapid Transit has has had kiosks and automatic cart, you’re just taking you take your card in and run through the turnstile and you’re on, you know, or hold it up to the bus driver. You’re no problem. Washington DC, same thing. Any idiot Well, except me has to has no problem going in sticking some money in and then you take the card when it runs out of money. You put some more money in it, but you just show up with your card. But you’re right, too. We do need a cash thing. And in fact, in Japan, everybody just pays things with cash. It’s both ways, but it’s faster. For the bus driver. Having been a bus driver, I can tell you, you don’t want to you’re not there to do cash transactions are held hard. Yeah. But um, so you know, and the difference is in Washington DC, I take the I take transportation everywhere. I went to Los Angeles they have a beautiful old trains a beautiful old transit station, but trying to get the card system to work. I wind up in tears and so I just said what the hell I’ll walk home because I can’t you know, nobody helped to and the system is incredibly complicated. It’s it’s ludicrous and it’s just a matter of that’s how you get passengers by making it easy. Longmont bought the fare box just so everybody in this town can get to work and and so within Longmont you don’t have to pay anything, though ridership. This is enormously helpful for people who are low income because they spend a fortune on the bus And they don’t have a fortune, they may need to just be able to get on the bus without feeling ashamed or something, you know. But what I was gonna say to Adam is that the original idea, you know, down on Main Street main. And first, there is the giant complex that finally got built in. It’s called Main Street Station, because it’s supposed to be across from our train station. And the train station was also supposed to have housing on the top of it. That was the plan, and we’ve had those plans for years. All we need is for RTD to actually bring us our train. And then we could build it. But I mean, if you had housing right in that complex in the the train station, it’d be terrific. But we do have some housing, it’s just very expensive. But yeah, we can be so much more creative in the way we have transit and, and housing combined, because that makes it better for everybody.

Unknown Speaker 1:21:07
Yeah, thanks for that I moved out here and was searching and searching for a way to take the bus in downtown Longmont in the street grid was the closest I could find. So walk to coffee. And then on the BART, berry rapid transit in DC, I think they use the fare zones, and where you pay and then you put your ticket in and you can get through. And so that’s sort of what we’re talking. That’s a high level of investment. And so, but that’s something that is in the stationary toolkit, we’ll run through the stakeholder working group and see what people think and see if we should keep it in the toolkit. And maybe maybe it will advance with time. And then on the housing side of things, and especially first and main patients. Yeah. I’m gonna move along now to the final question. If there’s time, Is there time?

Unknown Speaker 1:21:56
Yeah, we do have a few more items on the agenda, everyone. But yeah, let’s let’s go ahead and get this last question. And Adams, I see you had your hand up if you wanted to

Unknown Speaker 1:22:06
say something really quick. Jeff, could you also consider having real time tracking of the buses if possible?

Unknown Speaker 1:22:14
a hot dog. How about that, huh? Yeah, I would, I would second that. that exists already in the transit app, Jeff. Yeah, I thought I could see it. I not super reliable yet. Okay, that might be true. I think some of the buses have the trackers in them. And then some of them are based on where they should be. But that’s not my expertise, what we’re looking at at the stations and everything could in this stationary toolkit, aside from the app is having what’s called a public information display, or there’s other words for it. signage to let you know how long it is till the bus comes. So everything in the Caesar toolkit, not a promise, seven we’re gonna do but something that was like something we could do. The final one that I have is, and I don’t want to take all of your time here. Frequency of stops versus speed. So if we can have few stops and high speed, and you mentioned the local service, the regional also acting as a local route. So fewer stops, higher speed, maybe more accessible with more stops and slower speeds, which is more important to you fewer stops, higher speeds, more stops, slower speeds. And then where the stops are, is this top is in front of your house. That’s the only one you want.

Unknown Speaker 1:23:43
I think it also depends on whether or not that like the bus rapid transit, includes local routes that help people get to the bus rapid transit, because I wouldn’t necessarily need a bus to stop on front of my house, if I could take a bus to where it went. And that was regular and easy. So like I don’t mind the super fast bus only stopping a few times. If it’s not that difficult to get to the places where it only stops a few times.

Unknown Speaker 1:24:16
Nice to work with the local network. I just network keeps coming up is important throughout this entire thing. Anybody else have? I see Adam has his hand up? I’m not sure if I’m the one who was calling your case certainly can. Okay.

Unknown Speaker 1:24:31
Thanks, Jeff. I was just wondering, is there a third possibility to have both I know for example on us 287 they had the LD buses and I think there was like an LD x or something like that for Express. And so there was an option to tour the Front Range but also one where you could just get to the destination a lot quicker.

Unknown Speaker 1:24:51
Great. Different interlining you suppose was the term Phil use new term for me. So Different. Yeah, just make sure we get where we need to go. And yeah, I think that will be an option. And there’s been some other other things that have come up as well along along this area. And any Any other discussion on sort of, you know, number of stations, slower bus, lots of stations, slower bus, fewer stations faster bus. I’m not seeing any more hands. So I’m going to thank you very much for letting me be here. If we can put the presentation back up and go to the last slide, please. That has my contact information on it, which is why I would like to do this, we will have my info if you want a screenshot or whatever. But it’s right there at the bottom. Jeff butts Jae butts at Boulder county.org. If you have any questions, if you have any comments, any complaints, feel free to email me, I would like to keep in touch and then please visit bocote.org slash 287 and sign up for our listserv. There’s a big red button there. So Boko has in Boulder County. That’s how we shorten it.org. And then 287 planning because we are planning for 287 right now. So those two things are sort of the calls to action. So thank you very much. I appreciate your time. Thank you for having me here and good. Best wishes in your sustainability adventures.

Unknown Speaker 1:26:39
Thanks so much. That was a great presentation. Great discussion. Really appreciate you being here and leading us through it. Thank you for allowing me your time. Thank you very much. Thank you. Bye, bye. Okay. We are now at other business on the agenda. Lisa, are you taking us through the follow up action?

Unknown Speaker 1:27:06
Yeah, it’s just real quick. And first of all, I really like that sign off of good luck on your sustainability adventures. Start using.

Unknown Speaker 1:27:13
Lisa.

Unknown Speaker 1:27:14
Jed, this was just a quick question. I know our main meeting was pretty packed. There was a lot of stuff. And I know Mary’s not on today. But there seem to be some particularly particular interest or commentary that there wasn’t a lot focused on the pesticide aspect of the conversation in May. And I just wanted to ask the group, you know, Polly had brought up at the very end, because of some stuff happening at the state level looks like maybe there is some new opportunities to bring forth some additional codes or regulations locally around pesticides. And I just wanted to ask this group, do you want me to bring something to a future agenda that’s specifically focused on that? And if if we want to potentially make a recommendation to city council to look at a, you know, a pesticide, or whatever it might be resolution or something along those lines? So it’s just a quick question. I know, we don’t have a ton of time for discussion, but it’s a question of do you all want me to bring something specific back around pesticides and actions this group might take on that front? I would vote yes. How would others how others feel about that?

Unknown Speaker 1:28:32
I would as well, especially if it seems like there’s there’s no changes in state law that would actually allow the city to consider its own policy for probably the first time in quite a long time.

Unknown Speaker 1:28:43
policy was the word I was looking for things that I can think that. Great. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 1:28:52
I agree as well. And I think it would be helpful to hear a little bit about the state policy.

Unknown Speaker 1:28:57
Great. Alright, sounds good. I’ll do that. Perfect. And then the next loco hecate Sorry, no, no, no. Take over your job next week on the land acknowledgement piece. I’m going to pass off to Polly for that. Oh, Annie, did you Sorry, did you have those on the other piece? I didn’t know that. I am from staff. That’s what I Oh, yeah. Thank you my own revision. Great. Um, at least I didn’t know if you wanted to introduce the subject of future meetings and remote versus hybrid versus something that didn’t end up on the agenda. I think we were still waiting for information back from other folks on that. So I was not planning to bring that up today. Okay. Um, but thank you for the reminder for my own revision. So I am actually going to pass it off to, I guess, Tim, and otra. So we have an opportunity for a pretty large grant through the Department of Energy that we are looking for an approval today for a letter of support from this board on that. It’s a very quick turnaround that we’re trying to pull this application together. So I apologize to not get you information ahead of time. But it’s also a huge opportunity. And we do have one other thing on the agenda. So I want to keep this pretty brief, but I’ll pass

Unknown Speaker 1:30:30
it to them real quick. Good afternoon, board members, good to see all of you.

Unknown Speaker 1:30:38
Tried to be pretty quick, but I think it’s worth giving you just a brief background on how we got here. You know, following the transportation, the rollout of the transportation roadmap for the carbon free and equitable transportation that Francine and Phil had had worked so hard and getting together, we wanted to kind of start acting on that. And one of the things we wanted to ramp up was, you know, communicating with other organizations locally, regionally, nationally, to help us with those efforts. One of those groups is the Denver Metro Clean Cities organization, and they help cities in the area surrounding Denver, to increase the adoption of V’s and build stations and have fleet planning and do outreach and education and all sorts of electric vehicle transportation, they offer a lot of support to the cities are in those areas. So we reached out to them probably six weeks ago, I guess. And during and we explained all the things that we were doing, they’re super interested, there’s a lot of ways we can continue to engage with them on a lot of levels. But at that meeting, they had brought up the opportunity that we could pursue was a Department of Energy grant for a electric vehicle transition period of three years to have long might be a model city for electric vehicle transitioning. That’s a substantial grants a $4 million grant. But it also requires a an equal cost share. The good news on that is that at the cost share doesn’t have to be money only, it could be in kind services. And we also have a number of partners that will help us complete certain efforts in that in those in different areas to use grant money and also donate some of their own time like the National Renewable Energy Lab, Denver Metro Clean Cities sweep, there’s we have a bunch of different entities that are already on board via is another one, I think Lisa, right for for local electric vehicle transportation. So we’re engaging a lot of partners. One thing that did come up during the call is we had one week to turn around a concept paper for the Department of Energy in order to kind of frame out what we were intending to do it over the three years. And we managed to get that done. And it took Department of Energy a few weeks to and this is nationwide opportunity. So a few weeks later, and Department of Energy went through all the various concept papers. And actually we were selected to as one of the cities to go for a full application. Before this, there was a lot of reasons why they had cities not go forward due to whatever plans they had in place or information available. But we were selected to move forward with the application, which is due in mid July. And like I said it’s $4 million, with eight minutes, another $4 million question cost share. But we’re looking into things and I don’t know, Edgar, can you pull up? Can we pull up a document on this meeting? Or does it have to be done through staff for him? I have the PDF that I can pull up? Yeah, can you do that? I think we have a copy of the concept paper that kind of outlines a bunch of the different items we’re looking at rather than me just trying to rattle them off from memory, which I’ll do a terrible job of. But you have to scroll down a little bit here.

Unknown Speaker 1:34:13
Yeah, there’s like a bulleted list that says key items or something. There we go. The key aspects and you can see there’s a lot of them because this is substantial grant but we’re we’re actually working with multiple departments in the city transportation and Phil and, and Sandy and cash and fleet projects, environmental planning, of course, you know, Lisa’s group and his group have on sustainability and all the opportunities we have with them. And also along my power communications. I’m kind of hitting up that area. And we’re just looking to particularly we’re gonna try to focus on under potentially underserved communities and areas and residents for you know, electric vehicle opportunities, but we’re doing across the board. Just a lot of things were we’re looking at, from fleet planning, buying new vehicles on a more rapid timeline, looking at developing a citywide mapping for our electric distribution network and aligning that with opportunities for the city to engage in station installations, multifamily installations and infrastructure, you can just go through this list, we’d be happy to send this off if it hasn’t already been sent to the group to kind of look at. But But what would help us a great deal in our application is letter our letters of support. And that city council, we already developed one for city council, we’re going to present I think, at the next meeting to ask for their official letter of support for this, this grant application, and we’re, you know, seeing if you guys would be okay with with providing, also writing a letter of support to try to just pursue the grant, you know, we’re just filling out the application at this point, it’ll take several months for them to review. And if we’re approved, it would be a project that we would undergo from late this year, but through 20 2022 through 2024. It’s a three year opportunity, but but what it can do is really fast track our transportation roadmap. And it really aligns well with our development of the roadmap because it includes exactly the types of points that the Department of Energy is looking to, to provide like a model city for other cities around the country to move quickly towards electric vehicle transition and transportation. And I covered that all Lisa and Edra for Is there anything else you guys want to add?

Unknown Speaker 1:36:48
Just quickly, I think I’m not sure if you mentioned at the beginning, but the whole Funding Opportunity is to really help cities fast track the efforts towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions. So we would be trying to kind of pull in some of our objectives that have been laid out in the equitable, equitable free carbon free transportation roadmap and other plans and bringing them forward. And so this grant funding opportunity would help us do that. So that’s what the financial administration is really trying to do with this grant effort is to accelerate cities plans, give us more resources to enact what you already have got planned, but, you know, made that happen quicker. And a large focus is making sure that easy access is more equitable across the city as well. So that these are the two main points of emphasis for this con opportunity and Denver Metro Clean Cities coalition, they raised this with us a few weeks back saying this would be a great opportunity because it addresses the air pollution along the Front Range, it increases our opportunities for diversity and inclusion in relationship to Evie infrastructure. And it’s going to help us reduce greenhouse gas emissions. So they are really spearheading this in the sense that I think we have a very good chance of winning this grant. And, oh, and we’ve drafted a letter for you just in case you want to put your name to it. So that’s in one of the attachments we provided for you. So it’s really asking if you’re willing to sign that off, if you feel comfortable with it.

Unknown Speaker 1:38:22
And I can I move that we, as the sustainability advisory boards provide a letter of support for this proposal. Oh, second, that motion. All in favor? Aye. Aye. I think you have our letter. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. It’s a great opportunity there. Thank you very much.

Unknown Speaker 1:38:52
Thank you, Kate, we might need to follow up with us specifically to figure out how to get a signature from you if it works to do a digital wonder. I would hope so at this point, but we will follow up with you on that. Cool.

Unknown Speaker 1:39:07
Okay, um, do board members have any items? items for council? Yes.

Unknown Speaker 1:39:21
This is something that Lisa gave me. And it’s called land acknowledgement, a land acknowledgement statement. And I think I have to send this to but I’m Susie Hidalgo for I also read this aloud and city council does support this. Here’s the statement. We acknowledge that Longmont sits on the traditional territories to I’m sorry territory of the Cheyenne Arapaho, ute and other indigenous peoples We honor the history and the living and spiritual connection that the first peoples have with this land. It is our commitment to face the injustices that happened when land was taken, and to educate our communities, ourselves and our children to ensure that these in justices do not happen again. So I could send out that statement to all of you. But I believe what we’re looking for is a letter in support of that, from the sustainability advisory board. I’m not too clear on what’s going to happen with this, except that it should be a resolution. And it fits in nicely with our relationship with the Northern Arapaho people. But also, of course, Boulder County, as a whole has done a lot in the last few years to try to address some of those issues. And we do hope having an indigenous peoples day. So this is a really very tiny way to just address the issue of the injustices that happened.

Unknown Speaker 1:41:17
Jump Yeah, just I just wanted to Sorry, can I add a little bit more information there for folks. So this was also something that had been discussed in different parts of the organization. And the museum in particular, was interested in drafting a land acknowledgement statement. And Councilmember Hidalgo fairing, as Polly mentioned, brought this the draft that Polly just read to the museum advisory board, as well. And they they approve of approved for essentially, motion to approve the draft statement. We thought that bringing it to this board as well, because we have the connection to sustainability, the focus that you all have, particularly around equity seems like another board that seemed really relevant to bring this too and provided approval for they also give would give it more strength when taking it back to council to say both of these boards have approved the statement. As for it’ll be then up to counsel to determine the the breadth and scope of how the lead acknowledgement statement itself wants to be used. But we wanted to have an official statement from the organization that we can utilize for events. And I think in particular, in looking forward to the fall with the sister cities arrangement with the Northern Arapaho. I believe that’s all going to be finalized in the fall and wanted to have this statement in particular completed by for approval by them.

Unknown Speaker 1:42:51
Jim, did you I was just gonna say I think that that’s great. It’s great to hear that this council is approving this and it’s moving forward. And I don’t know if other people want to discuss it. But if not, I will. I will certainly move to provide a letter of support for the land acknowledgement statement. I’d second that motion. Great. Is there any discussion that you want to have on that? I’d

Unknown Speaker 1:43:22
like to say I support that as well. And I’d like to know, what are the Northern Arapaho folks think about this? What sort of feedback? Do you have anything to add? Or any things that like they’d like to provide for advice or guidance?

Unknown Speaker 1:43:37
Don’t think they have even heard about it, I intend to write them because there are a number of issues I I’m concerned about when we have a turnover of counsel this fall. And but I do want to let them know that this is happening. And I think it would be also very useful to write some of the Chiefs from the Cheyenne and also the ute tribe. We the ute. We’re everywhere in Colorado. And so and there are many others, as well. Many other tribes use this land. So yeah, that’s I’ll make that my little project is to write them. Thanks. Thank you. Okay, all in favor. Hi. Hi. I, we will support that. Great, thank you. Thank you. Thanks for bringing that to us.

Unknown Speaker 1:44:41
Um,

Unknown Speaker 1:44:43
so that brings us to close to the end of the agenda. The last item on the agenda is just to bring your attention to the informational items that are included in your board packet. And with that would end anybody like to make a motion to adjourn? Oh, yes.

Unknown Speaker 1:45:03
Sorry. Sorry. I kind of missed the opportunity early. But can I ask a quick question of Tim, while while we’re still here? What’s the due date on or the deadline for the proposal to the d?

Unknown Speaker 1:45:14
o? It’s July 13. I believe is that right, Lisa? 12th. July 12? Three. Yeah. Okay. too quick.

Unknown Speaker 1:45:22
Are you guys all fine in terms of having enough help to get that prepared and input in everything? I know you have enrile involved? They’re definitely experts on many aspects of this.

Unknown Speaker 1:45:33
Yeah. Yeah, that’s something we actually talked about today. It’s gonna be tight. But we’re all we’re trying to get are line items from the various groups of what efforts we expect to put forward. And Denver Metro has reached out to a bunch of the partners so. So we’re, we’re on our way, but I can’t say for sure, we’re going to do it comfortably. I mean, what are you offering and help?

Unknown Speaker 1:45:57
So So one thing that we do, I have two new Doa grants this year, so I’m doing pretty well on that. But one thing we sometimes do is have what we call red teams. dealy is used to these internal red teams, which kind of do an internal review of the proposals before, you know, with enough time to be able to make iterations and modifications to proposal before it’s submitted. So I’d be happy to look over and comment if that would be helpful.

Unknown Speaker 1:46:25
Yeah, I think that’s I would think that’s a great idea. Assuming we can get everything in time, we will move let’s keep in touch on that. I think we have a lot of work yet to do. But certainly some other eyes on it, I think would be helpful.

Unknown Speaker 1:46:40
Thank you, Charles. Great. Thanks. Thanks. While we’re jumping around in the agenda, the on the Lisa, on the the partnerships that you presented the the on the zero waste resolution update is recycled Colorado included in there.

Unknown Speaker 1:47:04
I didn’t have them on my list, but that’s great. Yeah. And I know Charlie, from our sanitation manager is connected to them. So thank you for reminding me about that. Sure. thing.

Unknown Speaker 1:47:16
Okay. So motion to adjourn. All the motions. Although do adjourn. I did second reading all the seconds. Oh. To beat me to it. All right. All in favor. Aye. Aye. Okay. Thanks, everyone. Thanks, staff for being here. guiding us through this great meeting. Appreciate it.