Video Description:
Transportation Advisory Board Meeting – January 2023
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:
Unknown Speaker 0:00
Okay, we’re gonna call to order the city of Longmont transportation Advisory Board meeting for January 9 2023. Let’s do a roll call please.
Unknown Speaker 0:09
Taylor Whitlam, David McInerney, President, Steve laner. President. Diane Crist present. Chair, you have a quorum.
Unknown Speaker 0:20
Great. Thank you. We were going to approve the minutes of the preceding meeting in December of 2022. But we did find there were three things that we want to have changed the reference to chairperson McInerney rather than board member. Taylor instead of Taylor. And sorry for laughing. And also, I think there was an addition of a verb in one of the sentences related to the boulder speed limit question that board member McInerney brought up. So we will move on to communications from staff.
Unknown Speaker 1:00
Good evening, everyone. My name is Phil Greenwald, transportation planning manager with the city. Just wanted to let you know that on your desk tonight is a new bike map for 2023. We still have a number of bike maps from last year. So we’re going to try to get rid of those. Still, that are still pretty, pretty good. But we think we have these in our hand at the beginning of the year. This is wonderful. This is the way we’d like to do it every year. And haven’t ready for spring when the bike season really kind of takes off. And we’ll we’ll have them ready then. But we are trying to kind of distribute what we have out there right now as we can. But if you have any questions or comments about the bike map, please let us know Ben Ortiz. Put that together. He’s in the front row here waving. And so just thanks for Ben for forgetting that that done in a timely fashion here. But we actually were able to pay for it before the end of the year. So that was always a good thing too, with budget. Other items? Did you have anything? I think that’s it for items from staff. But thank you very much.
Unknown Speaker 2:12
Great, thank you, Phil. And we’ll go ahead and see if there’s any public that would like to be heard today. Okay. I believe that our information item for the regional electric vehicle plan, she’s still delayed in traffic, is that correct?
Unknown Speaker 2:30
That is correct, sir.
Unknown Speaker 2:31
Would we like to move then to just the action plan for the proposed work plan? In lieu of that, and then we can when she does arrive, then we can go over her presentation?
Unknown Speaker 2:40
Perfect. We’ll try to stretch this out for you here a little bit. Sure, not too much. Okay. So last meeting in December, we did ask you to give us some feedback on the work plan, we did put it in that that packet. So we appreciate the feedback that we received at the time, we did make those corrections, it doesn’t look very pretty right now. But it will once once we get it kind of to the next level of adoption here. Once you as a board, consider it and we’ll consider it with any amendments that you might have as well. So it’s really broken into a couple of different sections here, four sections. The first section being a more of a regional idea of how we work regionally with this with this group with the transit, transportation advisory board, so we have the the county wide projects through Boulder County that is just kind of an ongoing thing. We we try to bring them in, and we can. And if you have specific things that you’d like to hear from Boulder County, let us know if you’ve heard other things that are going on, we can certainly kind of pinpoint those C dots the same way they have a bunch of different things going on right now, we’re going to focus on the 25 and 119 parking ride, which is kind of a big deal for this area, as well as the stationary 66. Over to mean that’s getting into that’s past the design stage now. So we’re getting into the construction phases of that. And we’re going after some typical projects. For that you’ll see tip in here, Transportation Improvement Program, projects under Dr. cog. So that’s the next one on there. But we no one really talks about regional transportation plan updates, and Vision Zero program updates. So again, ongoing pieces. If you have any, again, specific interest in any of those, we can bring them back individually. We’re also doing Vision Zero at the city level. So this might be a good time to bring them in for some of those efforts. But kind of missing from here, and we are still working on it. We thought we’d kind of be done in 2022 with a lot of the information for the Transportation Improvement Program projects, but we are in call number four which is the last call of this four year cycle. And it is stretching into 2023 here so we will be back in front of you. And I’ll just add that in here to make sure that we’re tracking but we do have some projects that will be waiting for. And once we get the applications in, we will have more information to you about kind of where we’re at as far as applications and scoring and all those good things. Next one on the list is the flex ridership and service levels, we usually do that in quarter number three, you saw those most fairly recently. So we’ll be back in quarter number three of next year to tell talk to you a little bit more about the ridership, the service levels and then how much we pay to those to that group to keep that transit service going between llama, Bertha, Loveland and Fort Collins, as well as there’s a trip to Boulder, but we can’t really get on that bus. We’ve talked about that a little bit. Speaking of RTD, sort of, we’ll be talking to them as well, there’s a peak service study that’s coming forward, oh, I should have brought the as as a staff update, we should chat a little bit about some open houses that are coming toward the end of this month, and I’ll get those to you in a in an email format. But at the end of this month, they are going to do some open houses, ones in gun barrel and then ones in. I believe it’s in Westminster. So there’s two opportunities to go to those meetings. Obviously, our gun barrel one is probably the most proximate to where we are. For for long while we did try to get it into Longmont, but they’ve kind of segmented it up. I’ll get those details, I should have those by the end of the meeting to for you to report in public. So more publicly, as those dates and times are already out there. So I do want to share that with you. Oh,
Unknown Speaker 6:40
I had a quick question. Excuse me on that study, do they have an idea or I should say a desired deadline as to when they’re going to have that ready.
Unknown Speaker 6:52
I believe it’s at the end of the year. By the time they wrap everything up. I’m just gonna go over my calendar really quick and just share those dates with you. So you have them again, in more of the public format, but let’s see. Yeah, so the the first meeting is going to be Tuesday, which is great, because that’s our counsel, typically our counsel night, but Tuesday, January 31, starting at five o’clock, going to seven o’clock, at the Hampton Inn and Suites. In North, they say North Boulder, but it’s 6333 lookout road. So that’s gun barrel. The second meeting is at the Westminster City Park Recreation Center. And that will also start at 5pm. And it’s 7pm. On Thursday, the second of February. So folks like who don’t live in town, look over my friend Ben. That’s at the Westminster City Park Recreation Center. 10 455 Sheridan Boulevard in Westminster. So again, five to seven. And those are the two public events that will have on or that RTD is going to have on that meeting on the
Unknown Speaker 8:13
31st. There is not a council meeting and there’s a lhg board of commissioners.
Unknown Speaker 8:17
Okay, that works out well for us. So no council meeting that night, but it’s on my housing authority meeting. Also with RTD, just the ongoing idea of working with them and getting the age of the Intergovernmental Agreement going and ready for first and main the transit station that we’ve been talking about for years and years. And finally getting to the next stage in that with also the Tod the transit oriented development planning and construction in the we can cross off infrastructure master plan that hasn’t been completed. So that’s good. We always are talking about the bus rapid transit project along Colorado State Highway 118, as well. That’s an ongoing project. And you’ll see more coming out of that as we move forward into higher levels of design and getting into construction on that. There’s some exciting news there we’ll share with we’ll share that with you. Maybe have them come in and share some of that news that they are getting funding for that project. So it is starting to piecemeal the funding together very slowly and surely. But they are getting funding federal funding for that at different levels. And also in quarter number two, we will probably bring them forward with the well this is gonna be more of a Boulder County option or piece we say RTD it was RTD and now it’s kind of shifted into Boulder County, so I’m gonna have to move that one. The 287 BRT study that’s turned into more of a Vision Zero safety study at this point, so they’ve got the routes, where the bus rapid transit needs to go on that corridor and then Boulder County is now taking over the piece of safety along that corridor. So we’ll want to move that with for you in the next iteration of this schedule, but we’ll be back, those will have public outreach events as well. So we’ll bring it to TB as well as share the public those public outreach events with you and the citizens. We also talked about quarter number two, we always have our TD comm and the whole staff comes and you get the, almost the two hour download from our TD about what’s going on kind of the state of the system. Report from them. So that’ll be coming typically in April, is when we do that, but we’ll see how that goes. And then just continually ongoing the evaluate the system and potential improvements for local regional Colin ride service, review that ridership data, just to make sure we’re on track with that ridership. Usually that’s given to us in that quarter to analysis as well. So that’s what we’re doing regionally. Is there anything that that’s been left off by staff that you would like to see added as a regional effort? We think we’ve covered them all. There’s probably a Weld County piece here that’s might be interesting as far as we do, do we do do we do to projects into in the Weld County group as well, so there’s a sub regional Boulder County and there’s a sub regional Weld County. So maybe one of the things that you would want to see as Weld County a little bit more involvement with that as we were involved with them quite a bit. Any comments on that first section?
Unknown Speaker 11:55
Okay, Phil, are they going to review the bus routes in Longmont?
Unknown Speaker 12:06
What cheerleader and board member Chris, they are going to, they’ve actually done a review. And I believe we heard this in April, where they outline the basic new routes that they’re going to add to Longmont in the local bus system. So that’s really meant to tie in with the first domain opening. And we probably won’t see those actually become active until first domain is open, which we’re hoping is by 2025, or in 2025. So it’s still a ways out there two years now. So we’re getting a little closer. But that’s the plan. implementation timeline.
Unknown Speaker 12:46
I know one of the pieces of feedback we received in the last public outreach that we did, I think that was in November, Mayor Peck was very enthusiastically encouraging people to ride buses. And there was concern that a lot of times the buses don’t go where people need to ride them to. So So I just wondered if there’s going to be any, any additional service before 2025 on buses.
Unknown Speaker 13:16
Well, and RTD has indicated that they were they will, they are working toward that end, but it’s going to be mostly on the regional system. So it’ll be between here and Denver’s where you’ll see the increase in buses, if there’s any, the local system will wait, they will wait on that until first domain is complete.
Unknown Speaker 13:37
Okay. So for the next section, we really focus more on our planning efforts, the Envision Longmont and what we were calling the multimodal transportation implemented implementation plan. This year, we’re moving forward with what’s called the TMP or the transportation mobility plan. So that’s going to be an update to that section of Envision Lamont, which is the comprehensive plan for the city. And so this element will be the transportation focus, and we hope to start going out for bids and proposals, first quarter of this year, end of the first quarter of this year. And once we’re done with all the Transportation Improvement Program applications in January, our plan is to move into into February with the request for proposals for that. And you’ll see there that it’s transportation mobility plan for first quarter, and it really is to update that whole transportation section put a lot of the we had called them enhance multi-use corridor, ebooks that plan the Main Street corridor master planning process, that plan the roadway master plan, put them all into one effort and really coordinated all and try to come up with Priority prioritizing the actual projects that need to go into the capital improvement program. Which isn’t next thing all Test will certainly take Comprehensive Planning and Land Use amendments to you as well. And against again, the enhanced multimodal plan incorporates with that TM PP. So we’ve we’ve outlined that here to kind of be more clear about that. The capital improvement program that’s more in Jim’s rules of actually building things. So it’s good to have the engineers come in and do that annual review with you. And so we will bring that in quarter two, with the Kennedy projects for the capital improvement program, and then give you an idea of what the current 2023 CIP projects are, so you can kind of see what is out there for upcoming projects, and give you a chance to weigh in on what you’d like to see for capital improvement projects for the next round of them. Anything that I missed there?
Unknown Speaker 15:48
Yep. And so, you’ll see the busway carpentry busway on there, other studies, bicycle pedestrian elements of the CIP. So those all be reviewed as as needed. The other piece is the other piece other. Basically working on your TV work plan, we’re doing that now. We’ll also do that in the fourth quarter, we’ll do the annual report again, like we did in December. And those are just kind of the those are just things we cycle in the 2023 budget for first quarter that we really need to start talking about those budget items, so that you can weigh in on some of that as well. That’s, that’s different than the CIP portion of the budget. So we’ll do operations and transportation system management pieces with that. Bicycle code, not sure really what that is. But that’s always us talking about the different laws that are out there. What we really want to do this year is get some information to folks about the new stop law that’s out there. So we can get that to the drivers as well as the bicyclists because we want people to understand what the laws are out there. When ideas that we work with our communications team and get that out there and more of the billing statements and those kinds of things so that we can help people understand what’s going on with that. Grant funding, obviously, we always are looking at those different things and take those to you as we as we get them. One grant opportunity that’s coming up very soon. And we’ll talk more about this as we’ve got a we’re gonna go for the raise grant. Again, I can’t tell you what race stands for. But it’s a great acronym. I’m sure that that it really is. It was originally Tiger, then it was build. And then it was raised. So every new administration renames it but it’s all the same dollars, federal dollars. For larger projects, we’re looking for $25 million to help us with the 119 and over intersection, as well as some other elements of the Colorado 119 bikeway. So you’ll see underpasses on there, as well as the underpass we have planted over in 118. crash report, quarter number three, hopefully this time, we’ll see how that goes. We’re hoping that the data is cleaner, and we can get it it’s more easier easily access than this this last year. quiet sounds will certainly want to update you on that. And if you have any questions about that let us know traffic safety fund. That’s our, our program of where we the tickets all have a surcharge on them every moving violation as a ticket or as a as a cost to it that goes into the traffic safety fund. So I want to talk to you about where those dollars should go and how we should spend those. Then your annual meeting as always now the the first meeting in July, so that you can vote for your Chair, Vice Chair, because that’s when you do your that’s when we have new appointments to the board is in July. So we’re off schedule a little bit. We’ll also do our annual meeting and we’ll talk about the posting of a four year posting is Ray’s grant definition rebuilding American American infrastructure with sustainability and equity. So there you go. City design standards. We’re actually working on those this year. So you’ll see some information on that in one way or another. The overall city wide bike and pedestrian plan that’s going to be incorporated into the TMP as well. Same thing Greenway updates. We just want to keep you apprised of the closures and detours especially as we start to build on the start construction on the Boston Avenue bridge over the over the same rain which is should be happening later this year earlier early this year. And so we’ll we’ll just need to keep you keep everybody apprised of what’s going on there. The Sugar Mill and steam projects. That one’s almost done, actually. So we may bring a final report to you on that, hopefully, next month or the month after EV infrastructure. So on electric vehicles, we’d like to talk a little bit about that tonight. So that’s a great, probably segue into that. But we’ll, we’ll still need you to make our recommendation on this on this list. Congestion benchmarks are pretty much outdated at this point, we don’t really talk about them anymore. So we need to kind of come up with a different way of looking at that was one way to stall growth, I guess, or stop growth, if the congestion from a project was so much that it kind of blew up, blew up, affected an intersection so much that it couldn’t operate efficiently. So we would measure and we’d use the benchmarks to stop stop development if we needed to. And that’s only happened once since I’ve been here in 23 years, the local micro transit model and Vision Zero, we’ll bring those to you at the end of the year. Vision Zero just because we need to start working with the action plan. Once we get the transportation mass mobility plan scuze me moving, then we’ll start going into the idea of trying to develop an action plan for Vision Zero at that point. And local micro transit model is really looking at different ways in the private sector, to provide transit to our citizens. And we’ve got some pretty aggressive goals on that. So that’ll be in the transportation mobility plan as well. Neighborhood traffic mitigation program is ongoing, we bring those to you as needed, we’ll probably have a pretty significant outreach piece on Third Avenue this year, you’ll see the meetings that will we’re going out to those citizens, and that that neighbor those neighbors as well for for a lot of that so we’ll keep you updated on that. There’s always other neighborhood traffic mitigation program, we usually try to get those to you as a staff update as we bring those through. And I think we talked about a couple months ago Gay Street as part of that program, north of 15. And then I think finally, I think it’s the last one on the list is the operating budget and that local bus fare buyout what we’d like to do is come to you usually in quarter number three but it’s going to be probably more like quarter number four at this point we’re just now getting the the the actual information from our TD to today basically is we’ve got the package to go in front of city council to continue those free fairs for 2023 So that’s kind of how long it takes from once we talked about it in quarter number three or four to when we actually started implementing it so with that certainly want to turn it over to you and have you fill in the blanks or take things out as you see fit for the for the plan Thank you
Unknown Speaker 23:09
any questions from the board? No, I I think we can table this and move on to the the EDI presentation
Unknown Speaker 23:27
would it be okay to ask for a motion to approve? This is an action item on your agenda. I just want to get no if there are no questions maybe I think
Unknown Speaker 23:36
that’s a good good segue
Unknown Speaker 23:46
Yes, Phil, I’m looking at the row labeled for other and then two rows below that there’s a reference to 2022 budget items is that intended to be there?
Unknown Speaker 24:07
No it’s not should be 2023 Thank you Okay for that actually moved to 2024 Because we’re asking you for the next the next year sorry.
Unknown Speaker 24:26
Well, I would imagine what that correction would be like to get a motion to approve
Unknown Speaker 24:36
I so move
Unknown Speaker 24:44
up Phil, I just want to add I know there’s some can’t find the line item now but there’s conversation in here about
Unknown Speaker 25:03
micro movements within the city. And I didn’t mean to put you on the spot about RTD. It’s just that at the November meeting, RTD didn’t get a chance to respond to the idea that, you know, there needs to be more bus service in town. And so I’m just wondering, is there a specific idea of how we will have more transportation within the city? Particularly, you know, as we know, on the east side of town, there’s there’s some real gaps there and serve as
Unknown Speaker 25:33
a board member? Chris, I don’t know. We didn’t get a chance to we don’t we’re not doing a lot of details on this yet, because it’s very amorphous at this point. But what we’re talking about is, how do we fill in the gaps that are in the RTD system, the local bus system, so it’s exactly kind of what you’re discussing is, how do we do that. And we’ve looked at some other models around this around the country. And there’s a there’s a real positive one that we’re seeing for we call it micro transit. It’s smaller vans, six person a person, vans are smaller buses. But they, they’re operated by a private company. And so it’s contracting with private companies. It’s very similar to the shelter program we have with Lamar, where we contract with them to put the shelters up. We’re the ones who are operating the contract. But they’re the ones doing all the work. As far as they put this, you know, they build the shelter, or they buy the shelters, they put the shelters up, they do get advertising for them. So that does help offset the costs for them, we need to find out how we could offset the costs for the micro transit model, but they they would provide the drivers the equipment, the routing. But that would be based on on a scope of work that we would put together. So we’d be very specific about what we were what we’re looking for. And we’ll have you know, as as this develops, we can provide more of that information to the to the board here, but that’s the general model. And we can send you more information, the the model we were looking at, there’s one example there’s there’s a lot of different examples around the country. It’s not just one but the one we’re looking at is called via transportation services. And we can send you more information about that as well. But there’s a lot of different groups out there. We’re just we’re trying to find out. If we put a request for proposal out for that kind of service, how much would it cost? And then what kind of level of service would we get? And we’re trying to again, fill in those gaps and make transit much more desirable, much easier for people to use, comfortable, reliable and safe is kind of the way we sell it.
Unknown Speaker 27:47
It can it can we add that to the list and have have a date when or push to see some action on that.
Unknown Speaker 27:58
We do show that under other for it’s this third to last line under local micro transit model. We can move that up if you’d like. Rather than being q4 we can move it up. Again, we’re not sure where the funding is going to come from at this point. And we’d have to be most likely grant funded to start and then we’d have to figure out a sustainable way to fund this over time.
Unknown Speaker 28:23
Okay, can we make that q1 Through q4, so that we have an ongoing conversation about it?
Unknown Speaker 28:29
We could just make it ongoing if you’d like. Yeah. Okay. Is that? Yeah. I’m not sure if I would ask for the motion right now. So it’d be a friendly amendment.
Unknown Speaker 28:42
Yeah, I think maybe what we’ll do is we’ll, I guess we’ll have to pull the motion. Discuss this.
Unknown Speaker 28:53
Phil had a quick question. Does the micro transit kind of go after also the last mile question when we’re talking about whether it’s, and I’m not saying it’s the right choice, electric scooters, electric bikes, those sorts of items. Is that also kind of wrapped in this micro transit model?
Unknown Speaker 29:15
Yes. Journaling or the the idea is, and I’ll just give you the general vision at this point is to do a 15 minute or less wait for a 15 minute or less ride across town. So we think that will be appealing, appealing to most folks to be able to. It’s almost an Uber Lyft type experience. But it’s, you’d have to meet, you wouldn’t maybe get a pickup right at your front door, you’d have to go to a meeting location or across a set of cross streets where other people would meet you or be there as well. So it’s almost like a bus stop situation. But it would be no more than that. have a couple of blocks from your house or your or your business or wherever you’re trying to get to or from. And we try to extend that those hours later into the evening to again to supplement the local bus service that turns off around eight o’clock in Longmont. So Did that answer your question? I’m sorry. Demonstrate.
Unknown Speaker 30:23
Do we have any other questions from the board? Okay, other than the changing of the budget year to 2024, on the second to top are two down from the other category. There’s no other questions or need to make any additions.
Unknown Speaker 30:52
If we could change for the local micro transit model, the cue Florida ongoing.
Unknown Speaker 31:04
Okay with the change to the budget to 2024, as well as of course, including are changing the local micro transit model to ongoing Are there any other changes or things that we would like to discuss? Okay, can we get a motion to approve?
Unknown Speaker 31:31
I’m move that we approve the transportation advisory board work plan and schedule with a to two adjustments to the 2023 budget line and the local micro transit model line. Seconded
Unknown Speaker 31:54
all those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed?
Unknown Speaker 32:06
So the next, the next item on your agenda is the regional electric vehicle plan from Lisa Nova. So, Lisa, how are you?
Unknown Speaker 32:17
Good. Evening, members of the transportation advisory board. It’s nice to see you all I haven’t been to this board for a while. And I think there’s different board members from the last time I was here in a much more formal setting. I’m not used to being in this room for anything other than council meetings. But I’m Lisa Knobloch and the sustainability manager for the city. I’m housed in a relatively newly created department called strategic integration. But I manage the city’s implementation of the sustainability and climate action plans. And make sure that the city is staying on track to meeting our pretty ambitious sustainability and climate action goals. So I work with Phil and Jim and Ben and probably just about everybody across the organization at some point or another. So I haven’t been to you all for quite a long time. But there’s been some exciting stuff particularly happening in the electric vehicle space. So I thought I would come give you all a visit and let you know what’s going on. Feel free to ask any questions. And I’m happy to come back at a more regular basis to help keep you all in the loop with things. And what I wanted to chat with you all about tonight is the regional transportation electrification plan for Boulder County communities. It’s a big name, mouthful for that for that plan was completed in August of last year. And we’re now in the implementation phase. And I just wanted to bring this to you all to let you all know that we’ve been participating in this plan, we have some significant Eevee goals that we’re trying to achieve, which I’ll talk a little bit about later. But to let you know, this is happening, and this is something that we’re working on. So I’m going to run through kind of the plan itself. And feel free to interject at any point in time if y’all have any questions or comments. So just what is the regional transportation electrification plan, so it’s a planning document that helps guide Boulder County communities and you’ll see who has been participating in this process to really support the large scale transition, equitable transition to zero emission vehicles. So as you all know, transportation is not an issue that is just Longmont that stops at our borders. We have folks that live and work and recreate and travel all across the front range and beyond. And so it really is beneficial for us to address all transportation but particularly electric vehicles on a regional basis. Oops, went the wrong way. So this really helps address that on a regional scale. It helps maximize our collective ability to design and implement larger scale solutions. leverage funding, so that’s a big one right now, especially with all the federal funding dollars coming down that support electric vehicles and electric vehicle infrastructure, and then also to avoid duplication of efforts. So we have folks that are working on these issues across the region. And we’re doing our best to stay coordinated so that we can collaborate when it makes sense for us to do that. And this plan helps us get all on the same page. The benefits, which I imagine you all are aware of so public health, obviously, as we transition to electric vehicles, in addition to greening our grid at the same time, there’s a lot of public health benefits around particularly air quality in particular, which we all know is a big issue on the front range. In particular, it helps reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, which also helps support our climate action goals. It helps create energy independence and cost stability by reducing the dependence on fossil fuels. And then it saves money over the lifetime of the vehicle, if you all have had the opportunity to, to own or use an electric vehicle. The maintenance is a lot cheaper, although there are still upfront barriers in terms of cost to folks and part of this plan goes into that as well. This then also helps support both state and local efforts to transition the transportation sector to electric so the state has a plan to reach a specific goal around EVs by 2030. And then also the city in 2020. I think it was can keep track of your new paths, the equitable carbon free transportation roadmap, which we brought to you Oh, and I don’t know how many members are, are still is that all new members from that point in time? Okay. Well, that might be a conversation for a different night, although I’m happy. I have some slides. Although they don’t go into great detail. I’ll make sure you all have the link to that plan. But I’ll touch on that a little bit later than I’m happy to answer more questions. But essentially, this regional plan helps us support our transportation, electrification goals as well. There’s a number of folks that have been involved in this process, it was largely run through the Xcel Energy Partners and energy program. That was that’s contracted through the Brendel group, which is a consulting group that does sustainability work. Um, a number of Boulder County communities have been participating in this process that are all listed there. I think Nederland is probably one of the only ones it’s not represented. In the planning process, the plan development started in July of 2012, or June, July of 2021. We’ve been working through this period of time to put the plan together. And then in August of last year, through December of this year is when our contract with partners and energy goes through as far as implementation goes. And then the communities will work together to figure out what implementation looks like beyond December 2023. The vision that we develop through this plan is a Boulder County communities will work with regional partners to implement solutions that support the large scale and equitable transportation to zero emission vehicles. That term equitable is a really important one, we know there’s a lot of barriers still for folks accessing electric vehicles, owning electric vehicles, and then making sure also within the Boulder County community, as well as that there’s geographic equity in terms of accessing things like charging infrastructure. So the goals we set our transition of 30% of all vehicles registered in Boulder County to zero emissions by 2030. And that’s in line with our Go Evie resolution that city council passed last year. And then also by 2030, to install combined 2380 public level two charging stations and DC fast charging stations, again, equitably distributed across Boulder County. So that’s really focusing on not just the areas that tend to have more money, but how do we as a region really go after some of those funds to support these goals across the Boulder County community. And this number in particular is partly what supports that state goal. Looking at that distribution across the entire state as well. The planning outcomes. So we have our two goals, we have four focus areas, which I’ll get into three cross cutting three themes, and then 15 strategies that are really focused on that immediate implementation timeline of 2022 to 2024. These are the four areas that really came out of this process that again, because we know there are a lot of barriers, we know that there are a lot of components to really make this transition successful. That there’s a lot of a lot of pieces that need to be in place in order for us to meet those goals. And all of those strategies fell into these four bucket areas, which are supporting community Evie adoption. That’s really focused more on the vehicle side of things. public charging, so that’s as you can imagine the charging infrastructure side, home and workplace charge Doing so a little bit separate than like the public sector but focusing on how do we help support folks to have charging either available at their homes or at their workplaces? And then plans, codes and policies. And that’s how do we create some standards around everything from ADA accessibility to design guidelines, like setbacks and signage, and all that kind of stuff to pricing structure best practices, because right now, it’s a little bit of the, the wild west out there. So as an Eevee, user, or Eevee. Owner, it’s hard to know what to expect from one station to the next. Up, I’ll just go back to this really quickly. The ones that I have highlighted, those are the ones that we’re working on right now within these subgroups. So in the community, Evie adoption area, we’re working on regional community and dealership outreach. You may have seen some some things that came up from the state recently, the state put together an Eevee outreach campaign. And we’ve been working to leverage those materials that they’ve been putting out through social media and press releases and whatnot, by reposting and re sharing those through our communication channels. For the public charging. We’re wrapping up right now a public mapping of public charging station located locations as well as a number of different factors that can help us really understand where do we need to focus on in terms of increasing that access to charging infrastructure? What areas of our community again, across the county, already have charging infrastructure where clearly doesn’t? And then how do we overlay that with different demographic or physical characteristics are things like clusters of multifamily housing where we know it’s more difficult for people to access charging? In the hermit home and workplace charging, the focus really is on that multifamily piece? Because we know that is a big difficult, what a big difficulty. If folks don’t have a garage, and they don’t have a dedicated place to charge, are there opportunities to include that in multifamily complexes? Or how do we put things in close proximity so that people can access that. And then in the plans, codes and policies for working on the ADA accessibility and pricing structure right now.
Unknown Speaker 42:11
This is a list of all the strategies in each of those areas. So you can see the priority strategies for 2022 to 2024, which cover the areas that I just talked about. And then there’s also a list of strategies that didn’t rise to that near term implementation for a variety of reasons. But I included that here so that you can see the other things that we know still need to happen. And that will be helpful in supporting this transition, but that are a little bit further out. And then similar in the public charging, and the plans, codes and policies. So looking at things that are much more complicated, like vehicle to grid charging, creating some more outreach materials and different types of incentives and things like that, that are going to require more budget and planning for us and then in the next couple years. So our approach to implementation. So we have quarterly full team meetings, that’s with everybody that you saw on that slide earlier, all the different municipalities, as well as some other partners like Excel in the chambers, Latino Chamber, folks like that, that are involved in this process. We have monthly subgroup meetings for each of those subgroups. And then we have project management team meetings as well. So trying to make sure to keep everyone on the same page as we’ve we’re doing individual subgroup work as well. Partners and energy is the group that’s really managing the project management side side of this to help us keep keeping help keeping us focused towards reaching those goals. Again, as I mentioned, the contract with them just goes through the end of this year. And so the individual communities will need to figure out how do we work together beyond that timeframe to continue. This is just an overlay showing sorry, I’m not sure what information about purchase orders somehow got dropped in there. Sorry about that. Multitasking, apparently today. So looking at how the regional EV plan also supports community plans. And so we have the higher level vision goals, our focus areas and targets. And then we’ve also identified in the plan, I don’t know if you’ve all had a chance to look at it yet. I sent the link to you all. There’s regional strategies. So really identifying what are the strategies that make sense for us to work, work collaboratively, collaboratively across the region. And then community best practices which then the communities can take and implement on a local scale, because those are things that really need to be adapted for the local community context and those fit within our community plans. And so that’s where I’ll talk briefly with you all about the equitable carbon free transportation roadmap, and I’m happy to send you all the link to this plan. Through Phil afterwards. It’s a it’s a nice short play. And with lots of really wonderful graphics you all can have a look at. But we put this plan together, when we are doing our greenhouse gas inventory work, transportation is a significant part of our greenhouse gas emissions. Next to electricity and natural gas. We, but it’s a it’s a pretty tough nut to crack, and particularly because of the regional nature of transportation. So we have these goals of reducing overall transmission or overall emissions by 69% by 2050, and 66% by 2030. And increasing vehicle electrification, reducing single occupancy, vehicle miles traveled and improving air quality. But before creating this plan, we really didn’t have we had a handful of strategies, but not a great sense of how to prioritize those strategies, particularly in the transportation sector. And again, we really wanted to focus on that being an equitable process and make sure that that’s not just something that benefits a handful of folks in our community. And that we weren’t just focusing on electric vehicles, because of the some of those barriers that we talked about around cost and accessibility. And so this is really focusing on the entire transportation system. That includes electric vehicles. The Guiding Principles for that plan, have the these focus areas of shortening and reducing the number of trips, shifting modes, reducing direct vehicle emissions, through shifting to electric vehicles, and then also these equity priorities along the bottom around, making sure that we connect with folks, we’re including folks, we’re reducing those barriers, and we’re focusing on things like safety that we know are really important to everybody. And then this is a nice graphic of what’s contained in the roadmap. So you can see kind of that starting point down at the bottom, we already have some Eevee charging stations that are that are around town that are available to the community of focus on safety, we have some financial incentives available to folks. And then we provide some Evie education through long run power communications. And then looking at that two year 2023 goal of making sure that we’re embedding equity in all the work that we do. And you’ll see that as I mentioned in the regional transportation plan that really coming through focusing on zero emissions fleet, and we have a lot of work underway in that, in that regard with our fleet manager doing a lot of that transition, the Go Eevee resolution with which city council passed in 2021. Working on supporting households to be EBV. Ready, and so that that sort of things like code changes, which we did last year, and then transit education as well. And then you see it kind of moves beyond to things that are a little bit more complicated. So continuing to expand Evie, expanding the education, looking at things like Evie and multimodal incentives, focusing on the workforce development piece. And then longer term things like how do we actually support people and things like replace your ride and things that are going to require a lot more budget for us. But this gives you a sense of the things that are encapsulated in the road with the roadmap, which as I said, is not just focused on EVs, but also transit accessibility and other multimodal multimodal forms, which is a word I can never say. So that’s pretty much it. I’m mostly just wanted to share that information with you all. Do you all have any questions or comments or anything that you’d like to share with me?
Unknown Speaker 48:41
Thanks for your presentation, Lisa, when I read through the plan, the thing that struck me the strongest was that the plan does not include any goals or strategies related to low carbon public transit operations. Can you explain that? And when I looked at your wonderful graphic of all the partners, there was a partner that seemed to be missing to me, that goes by a three letter acronym.
Unknown Speaker 49:14
I’m sure we can’t all guess what that acronym is? Yeah, that’s a great question. The reason that this plan doesn’t focus on that is because it was this plan was specifically focused on electric vehicles like low or low light duty vehicles. So not necessarily looking at transit and other things kind of outside of that. That’s why I mentioned that when we did the transportation roadmap for the city. We did focus beyond just electric vehicles and light duty vehicles. But the plan that the region focused on they wanted to look at specifically, electric vehicles for personal use, or things like small fleets like Uber and Lyft. And that sort of stuff non larger scale transit electrification, that is work that’s happening in other spaces. I don’t know, if, if you’re involved any of that, in terms of what our TDs plans are, I haven’t heard anything about that for a while.
Unknown Speaker 50:17
Yeah, we weren’t working with RTD, as much as we were working with via mobility services, which is what we have is the Boulder County via, and they were going to an electric fleet fleet already. So it was good to work with them. And we were kind of on the same pages that were the other folks that we were working with was the same frame Valley School District and their bus systems. And at the time, there wasn’t a lot of traction there for electric vehicle or electric buses at the time. But I think that’s moving in a more positive direction, as they’re starting to see more about more, more, more grant opportunities to help with electric school buses. So there is still work to be done with RTD. There, they’ve converted some of their fleet in downtown Denver. But the more regional pieces aren’t on their radar right now, for right now
Unknown Speaker 51:11
was RTD invited to be part of this plan.
Unknown Speaker 51:16
They weren’t because again, the focus of this plan was just looking at light duty electric vehicles. We this is a space as I mentioned, transportation is is a big thorny issue to tackle and we have to kind of take it in pieces. And so when when the regional communities came together, the light duty, like electric vehicles was the area of priority for folks right now. I agree that that is a big issue. That’s an issue that folks like the Colorado community for climate action, which we’re a member of at CC for Associates, a statewide lobbying organization that lobbies for state legislation to support all things climate action, and that it that is an area of focus from that group, but not for this planet in particular.
Unknown Speaker 52:07
So Lisa, one of your goals is to reduce single occupancy miles traveled so. So how do you consider that to be played out in the paradigm you’re talking about with light use? Vehicles?
Unknown Speaker 52:21
Yeah, so I would say that that is really where the other efforts that we work on with Phil and Ben and folks in that area where we’re really trying to get people out of vehicles altogether personal vehicles, whether they be electric, or internal combustion engine vehicles, and supporting all of the things all of the multimodal access to transit, biking, and walking, active transportation, all of those sorts of things, that’s really that focus of reducing the single occupancy vehicles, or things like carpooling, vanpooling, those types of efforts. Phil, do you want to add anything to that as your your area?
Unknown Speaker 53:00
Well, just the reality that even if we were to convert the whole fleet, current fleet to electric vehicles today, or tomorrow, we will still have issues of congestion, right? So and there’s still be safety concerns with that number of vehicles. And just that being on the road, not changing anything. So it’s not just electric vehicle conversion. And it’s not just about only air quality, it’s also about safety of the citizens. And so that’s part of the focus as well. But we also see that the air quality benefits could be if we can make bicycling, again, safer, more reliable and more comfortable, as well as transit, all those three things for transit, people may make a decision to move to those different modes rather than us trying to force people into modes, make it more attractive for people to get into those modes. And then that will help with our congestion issue as well as helping with our inequality issue.
Unknown Speaker 54:00
Would you say that’s 5050? So you’re saying you don’t want everyone to drive an electric vehicle, what you want is to reduce the number of vehicles as well. So that kind of relates to the RTD issue, and and other modes of transportation. So is it about 5050? Or do you have any idea of how much how much would have to go to multimodal?
Unknown Speaker 54:21
Yes, we have goals around that particular number, it is not 5050. And I don’t have those numbers at the top of my head, I want to say something like increasing 14%. So what I want to say around I would have to I can definitely get those numbers for you and I’m sorry to come prepared with those in particular, but we do have specific goals around increasing mode share and reducing single occupancy vehicles. So those are those those two things kind of go hand in hand, right.
Unknown Speaker 54:54
So you want to reduce single use vehicles by 14% or you want to For people to use multimodal transportation 14% More of the more times.
Unknown Speaker 55:06
Yeah, I think Phil’s trying to trying to pull those up. I don’t have those numbers at the at the tip of my tongue. I apologize for that. But if not, yeah, it’s definitely not 5050, the bulk of it is focused on on that, that the bulk of the emissions reduction really is focused on that vehicle electrification switch. So getting people to drive electric vehicles instead of internal combustion engine vehicles. And then the emissions also associated with the medium and heavy duty vehicles as well. So buses and things like that. And then it is a much smaller percentage in terms of driving that mode share. So getting people to walk and bike and use transit more, and thereby reducing those, the single occupancy vehicle.
Unknown Speaker 55:53
And I’m just wondering, what, what, what portion of it do you want people just to not drive at all? And I think some of that also has to do with having what people need more accessible to them in Yeah, walkable areas.
Unknown Speaker 56:11
Yeah. So then yeah, that’s where it starts to touch into things like land use, and all of those sorts of things of how are we developing communities that where people, neighborhoods and areas where people have everything that they need within, you know, a 15, or 20 minute walk or bicycle ride, we get into other difficult economic factors like housing affordability, and where people can afford to live and where they work, and all those sorts of things. So there’s a lot of things that go into that that are that are more difficult, but that are also when you start to take a step back part of the bigger picture of the different pieces that we’re working to put in place that helps support all of these efforts.
Unknown Speaker 56:51
Which is a nice segue into one of the other questions I had, which is, when you’re talking about these charging stations, and we’re also looking at the planning and development of the town, are you having having trouble finding space for them?
Unknown Speaker 57:04
Oh, we’re not having trouble finding space, per se, I would say when you start to talk about taking parking spaces, away from other uses, that can be difficult. We do now have code updates in place around new construction, focusing on the residential side, and we’re talking about code requirements on the commercial side as well, that would start to require some level of at least installing conduit if not full on charging station. So as developments are coming online, those things are built in from the beginning. Space is not necessarily an issue. It’s sometimes more around electrical capacity at different sites. And so that’s another component that we have to assess is whether or not a site or multiple sites in one particular area can support a lot of incoming electric vehicle charging infrastructure without having to do upgrades to the infrastructure in that particular area. Jim, I don’t know if you want to add anything to that from the engineering side?
Unknown Speaker 58:11
Well, that would be an LPC question. But based on the meetings we’ve had with them on some of the meetings that that were noted in the presentation, one of the challenges will be the electrical infrastructure that goes along with the added draws to the system. So that is one of the factors we’re looking at when we look at placement, where in the city they have and what infrastructure they have there. So as we plan them out, there’s adequate time to plan for improvements to the infrastructure. It’s just, you know, right now, we’re just very early in this planning phases. But one thing I will note is and the from the development kind of standpoint, we see the development, the DRS, what’s called the RC the Development Review Committee, we’ve seen a number of, of applications for charging stations from the private sector. Some of the gas stations in town or are looking to add charging stations. We’re working on an application right now over at the Twin Peaks mall area there even though they’ve already have some charging stations there. They’re putting in applications to add more. So we’re seeing it in a number of different levels.
Unknown Speaker 59:29
To set increase in electrical power, does that add to emissions?
Unknown Speaker 59:37
It doesn’t, it doesn’t. And we have all of the modeling behind that. So part of the important component of this, again, kind of taking the step back and what are all the pieces that need to be in place in order for us to meet those greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals was just in part what’s driving this is that the grid needs to continue to get cleaner to support the electricity to power electric vehicles and we’re at about 50% renewable delivered energy currently, at least as of the end of 2021. I haven’t seen the data for 2022 years since we’re just now into the new year. And that’s a commitment from Platte River and the city of Longmont, as well as the other owner communities to be 100% renewable by 2030. There’s modeling that goes into whether or not it’s clean enough to say that the emissions added from the additional electricity are a benefit, a net benefit versus from transitioning away from fossil fuels. So you have to hit a certain threshold of renewables in order for that to be true. And we are below or beyond that, because of our energy mix now. So So, yes, and no. And there’s modeling behind that. The other direct benefit that you get, regardless is the tailpipe emissions, which are not insignificant from an air quality standpoint. So you’re adding electricity, but it’s cleaner than the gas.
Unknown Speaker 1:01:05
Okay. Thanks.
Unknown Speaker 1:01:07
Sure. Any other
Unknown Speaker 1:01:11
add a couple of questions and comments. It seems with the, the conversation on RTD. It’s almost like the tiger by the tail. Right? We’re we’re not going to control that, nor is any community and or region. So I understand that that’s, again, incremental. And then the mobility by choice, you know, is what I see is more important here is the equitable access and moving that needle. You know, I, I think folks are going to choose their mobility by choice based on a lot of different factors that we just can’t have a say so in, right. But I was curious about when you mentioned, Twin Peaks mall and talking about the public charging stations and notwithstanding that infrastructure that’s needed and all that. Is that viewed as revenue generation for any of the partners that are involved? Or is it strictly an amenity? Say if it were townhouse, apartment house multifamily structure, that might be more amenity, as opposed to revenue generation? I was just curious if partners are involved in this or looking at this as revenue generation?
Unknown Speaker 1:02:20
Yeah. When we talk to business partners and things like that. Yeah, that goes back to part of what one of those subgroups is focusing on in terms of best practices around pricing, pricing strategies. And part of that is, is focused on helping to helping folks to understand how do you price it so one, you’re not out of pocket money, unless it is a driving amenity for some places, a lot of folks are going to need to have some level of revenue coming in from those and that is the case for the most part there is it’s not like people are making hand money like hand over fist necessarily, but there is a revenue generation that that happens. There’s a maintenance component that can trip people up sometimes if the if a station goes down, and you need to get somebody in to help fix that. And so part of the work of that subgroup is to have all those things in place so that we can support business owners and private entities to understand what all those things are going in. So that that can be a profitable, profitable generator for folks. It is becoming more and more of an amenity. And so we’re starting to see people ask for things like that more. So that’s, you know, definitely part of the conversation but not the driving factor for most people.
Unknown Speaker 1:03:32
Great, thank you. And, excuse me, the last other two questions and Jimmy my bill addresses is LPC IS THERE ARE THEY cuz I don’t know how they operate within the city charter wise and all that but is that a partner that’s considered a part of this. And then the last is a qmD are they engaged on on this project as well I don’t recall if I saw a qmD on on the list of contributing organizations.
Unknown Speaker 1:04:00
So LPC is another division or department within the city. And so I’ve been the main representative working on this plan, but I work closely with a lot of colleagues that LPC so I’ve kept them in the loop in some of them are now participating in the subgroups that you saw earlier. As well as as Ben’s been participating in one of them as well. So we’re really drawing folks from other parts of the organization into that process. So LPC is very much been a part of that and I’m not familiar with AQ MD so I can take a stab at what that is but I’m not familiar familiar with with them as a partner
Unknown Speaker 1:04:36
basically yeah municipal district and I believe they do because they’ll do the they did the lawn more program with you know, replace your ice lawn lawn more with a electric racket. Yeah, okay. That’s right. Okay. Yes, regional air quality, but I thought they go by qmD. Now maybe it is racket quality control. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 1:04:58
Thank you, Susie. Okay, yep, there’s a lot of acronyms in this particular space, it’s hard to keep track of them. They haven’t been directly involved in this. We we work closely with a lot of folks from that agency. They are one of the ones that are responsible for some of that, that funding that comes down, although I think some of that is changing. As other federal funding comes down, I can’t speak to the details of that. But so so we’ve been engaged with them, not necessarily directly in this project, but they they’re involved in a lot of this work on the regional scale. But they weren’t a partner that helped to build the plan.
Unknown Speaker 1:05:42
Great, thank you. Good presentation, a lot of information. Taylor, do you have anything you want to add? Oh,
Unknown Speaker 1:05:52
I was waiting. I guess the one thing that I’m intrigued by, because in the pamphlet, at least there wasn’t any, like hard numbers for incentives. And, and, you know, obviously, for homeowners, upgrading an electric panel is quite expensive. And then adding another amperage for for public charging. My neighbor actually just did that. And I’m looking forward to doing that as well. Fingers crossed. So that’s one thing is just how incentives will be factored in, especially for income or Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 1:06:32
Yeah, so that’s one of the one of the strategies within here is see is figuring out those incentives piece. And so that’s really digging into kind of what’s already out there. How well are they working? Who can access those incentives, because there’s barriers to accessing a lot of the incentives that are available. A lot of them are things like tax credits and things that you get later not, you know, at the time that you probably need them. So that’s part of the research of the implementation side and then figuring out, that’ll be that’ll be one that, that looks at what happens on a regional scale and who manages that and what can happen on a local scale. So we LPC does have a rebate available right now for charging infrastructure for residential customers. I believe it’s $500 to help install a charger, but if you have to deal with other upgrades that can be very costly. So that’s other work that we’re also looking at in our building electrification work as well of how to how do we help support people financially in the transition? So we’ll be getting into that. I don’t have any specific numbers associated with that as yet. And then, I mean, the other big piece of that is where does that money come from? There is federal funding now available through the IRA and other sources that we’re keeping track of?
Unknown Speaker 1:07:51
And then a second question is because we didn’t talk about E bikes very much. And we know the rebate for the E bikes in this city went through by a day, or something very fast. Yeah. But but then also just like a national thing, like obviously, through COVID, people started buying them in droves. And and then now they’re actually out selling electric and hybrid cars combined. So I just find that super intriguing. But then also, I’m reminded of my experience in other countries where they started now, like your last mile delivery is by bike. And that involves, you know, bigger cities, like I hope we’ll get to that point. And, you know, at some point, but then they also developed a battery swap system. So I don’t know if that’s odd, another avenue and probably easier to implement. So it could be done faster than just charging network. But yeah, just an idea.
Unknown Speaker 1:08:46
Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. You and I are on the same page about that. There’s a lot of interesting things happening. Different places for sure. Anything else?
Unknown Speaker 1:09:01
Before there were electric vehicles. There were vehicle mile reduction programs that were focused on ride sharing and car pooling concepts. I worked for a company quite a while ago that bought a van. And that Dan spent the night in a parking garage near an urban transit center. And in the morning, it transported a vanload of people from that neighborhood out to the suburban location of a company where we worked in in the afternoon it did the reverse trip, our ride sharing and carpooling concepts, they still viable or not the air part of this. I mean, if you if you envision that van as being an electric VM, can that sort of thing happen or did that all just go away with the pandemic?
Unknown Speaker 1:09:59
That still out there, but I’m gonna let Ben jump in on that, because that’s his area for sure.
Unknown Speaker 1:10:10
Yes, great. Thanks, Ben rotis transportation planner. So Denver Regional Council of Governments, they have actually have a department called Way to Go program and they actually manage ride sharing programs, including vanpools. I was a former employee there and actually started vanpool at Dr. cog. And, and then that van ran for many, many years. So they have an ongoing presence throughout throughout the Dr. cog region. So the answer is, is yes. Are you asking
Unknown Speaker 1:10:51
if there are electric? That’s my next question. How many of those vans are electric vehicles
Unknown Speaker 1:10:56
that unfortunately, I don’t know the answer to that? I think the answer is none. But I’m uncertain, I would have to get back with them and and confirm that.
Unknown Speaker 1:11:12
I mean, I can add, there’s, I know a rival and a couple other companies that are doing electric light mobility, van, you know, for almost last mile delivery and that sort of thing in urban areas. So we’re probably maybe two or three years away from a tipping point where we could see rideshare gain more traction in electronic mode.
Unknown Speaker 1:11:37
There are also private companies out there, I believe enterprise is one that’s starting to get into that, that van pooling business. They don’t have a big presence yet.
Unknown Speaker 1:11:54
Great. Any other questions from the board? Great. Thank you so much for the presentation.
Unknown Speaker 1:12:00
Yeah. Thank you all.
Unknown Speaker 1:12:22
Phil, do you have anything else?
Unknown Speaker 1:12:25
I do not. We’re just on the next item is comments from board members.
Unknown Speaker 1:12:31
If I could, I’ll start to my right here and start with Taylor.
Unknown Speaker 1:12:41
Well, that was a nice short and sweet meeting. Thank you for the presentation. I do want to plug an event that’s on Wednesday that I think Lisa knows about as well. The lessons from the Bloomberg City Lab summit 2020 to Amsterdam, concerning the sustainable city council chambers, 7pm. This Wednesday, and more. I’ll be there. And I think it’ll be a very exciting discussion.
Unknown Speaker 1:13:08
So. I just want to thank Lisa and all the staff for the information they provided. My questions have been answered. And my comments have been previously considered. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 1:13:39
Well, thank you, Jim, and Phil, for always keeping us on track and Lisa, for your presentation. And also, Ben, thank you for the maps. I have a question for my fellow board members. And I I wonder if we could kind of take this grassroots and have a conversation about how to solve our own transportation problems. And we’ve talked about you know, sometimes I biked down here, sometimes we members of the board, ride the bus. But often the bus stops running at eight o’clock and we can’t ride the bus. And you know, it gets dark early. And so I have a long ways to go. I don’t always feel safe riding all the way home at night after after these meetings and I would just just kind of organically want to talk about, well, how do we solve our transportation problems, you know, with what we have available to us. And I just wonder if anybody else is interested in in that type of discussion?
Unknown Speaker 1:14:54
Well, the only comment I can make about that is kind of goes back to that prior discussion about mobility by choice. And I would agree with you that part of that is a personal decision to say I prefer to ride a bike ebike regular bike, I would ride a bike, you know, the bus when it’s available to us. I do think that micro transit and those availability is is a concern that’s going to probably increase as we as we move farther with the first and main development. So I don’t have an answer in terms of our discussion doing that. But I think it is something that’s that’s relevant that, you know, I don’t know how we can discuss it in this form. But I do think it’s something that we should consider. No, absolutely. Yeah. And I, again, I want to thank staff, as always, you guys kind of bring it every time we meet. And Lisa has a great presentation. Appreciate that. So I think with that we can go ahead. Nope, we have one more we have items for the upcoming agenda.
Unknown Speaker 1:16:11
Yes, I’m just going through your new work plan. We do have the TMP coming up to talk more about that. Maybe get some ideas from this group on how that should be scoped? And what kind of wording do we want to put in to a proposal that would go out to everyone on that. But you’ll be hearing about that process throughout. So I think that’s the first step is to talk a little bit about the scoping language on that. And then the 2020 for budgeting items, or budget items that are not necessarily capital projects. So that’s also listed in first quarter, we’ll probably have some more things that pop up, I’m guessing the Transportation Improvement Program will have for projects for you to talk a little bit more about and understand that they’re going up as far as getting evaluated, and what the input, what the impacts to the city would be. If we got 123, or all four of those projects, and kind of which sub regions we’re working with on those. So give you a little bit more information, give the public a little bit more information on those those items. So that’s what we have planned for you in February.
Unknown Speaker 1:17:31
Go ahead, David. Yeah, in response to your comment, Diane, I’m also interested in personal transportation options available to board members. You may recall, there were some meetings earlier this year that went right to eight o’clock, and I left as if I had been shot out of a cannon. And the reason for that is that the last RTD bus to my neighborhood, leaves the transit station at Roosevelt park at 8pm. So I had three minutes to get to third and to make that bus. So I personally would be very interested in the first and main station being more than just an RTD station. And perhaps it might incorporate some of these micro mobility options. Maybe it could be kind of a node for Uber and Lyft to get back to ride sharing concepts rather than just a mobile phone based taxi service. So yeah, I’m I’m interested.
Unknown Speaker 1:18:48
Well, Phil, that also relates to your question about the TMP how deep do you want us to go in terms of ideas for for implementation, because just as we’re talking about this, I guess I’m more experiential. You know, if if I have to ride the bus and it takes me an hour to get around town, I have a lot more experience as to what would work better, or, you know, what particularly works for my neighborhood, that kind of thing, and also gives me a little more information to add to your your TMP plan. So how do you how deep do you want us to go in our suggestions?
Unknown Speaker 1:19:29
Well, initially, I think we’ll be asking for your ideas on policy direction. So do we put more dollars into transit into bike infrastructure into when we need to, we need to keep our roads maintained as they are that’s a big and Jim will talk more about that when we bring that up as well. But it’s it’s going to be talking about how we maintain the existing existing system as it is with some changes to advice bicycle infrastructure when we can or transit infrastructure when we can, but how much does this board as well as the city council and the citizens want to move or change priorities. So there’ll be a broader discussion, I think I don’t think it’s going to get down to that detail yet. Until we actually start the transportation mobility planning process and have a consultant on board, then they’ll want to get into those details and find out what you are looking for, specifically in for transit in the city. And if you talk about more frequency, or later hours or earlier hours, that’s all going to be things that you know, have a trade off in costs, right? RTD is not going to pay for that they have a base budget, and they’re probably going to go above that without a lot of pressure. And so as we’re going to put pressure on RTD, to do that, we’re going to come up with dollars from our city budget, does that mean that the roads aren’t as good shape as they are today? tax increase, or tax increases? That’s a dare from Jim. And I didn’t so I get
Unknown Speaker 1:21:09
well, okay, so when we, when we were visiting, before we started the meeting, we were talking about New Jersey City and have an article that was published about how they had gotten division zero. And one of the things that stood out for me in that article was they said, you know, all these public service meetings, kind of become a hurdles that you have to go through. But something that worked for them was to put out barriers, put out, you know, pop up, circular drive throughs, just to see how people responded to them. And then after they had tried them, whether they wanted to see them actually implemented. And so I’m just wondering, from your perspective, would you like to be more adventurous that way? You know, try something and see if it’s worth pursuing before we put it on the, on the plan? Have a little experimentation with it and see what the response is?
Unknown Speaker 1:22:16
Well, I think what we do, I mean, you can probably hear about this in the newspaper Wednesday morning, is the Downtown Development Authority is going to be with City Council on a pre meeting. And they’re going to be talking about a lot of this tactical urbanism. So how do you do a temporary fix, or maybe it’s paint or maybe something very, very inexpensive to start with striping or, or bollards are something that extends maybe a curb in certain locations so that we can see if that’s working? For safety reasons, I think this is a lot of what you’re talking about with Jersey City where they tried different things that were fairly temporary in nature, saw what worked and then implemented, maybe have more of a capital project, right? Where you actually do the rebuild. So we’ll be talking about that. It’s not really in our nature to be really experimental, without some direction from this board, city council and the citizens. So we are, we certainly put that out there as here’s some ideas that we’ve seen other localities and other municipalities do. And we’ll share those and see if that has some traction in this city. But I’m very wary about trying to create any policy from the staff level, I can’t do that. So what we do is rely on the boards and commissions and city council and the citizens to direct us into how that happens. And that’s through the city manager helps do that, too. So there’s a lot of different steps, but so we’ll put things out there that we hear about the Jersey City is a great example because they evidently have done made great strides and Vision Zero this year. So we’ll see if that continues.
Unknown Speaker 1:24:06
So I’m hearing you say you’d like some ideas from us. Okay. Can I make a motion that we have a study session as a group, maybe outside of the board meetings to come up with some ideas to help help the staff in their transportation mobility plan?
Unknown Speaker 1:24:27
I suppose could we add that to the next agenda to discuss an ad rather than do it impromptu on this one? That way, Patrick would be here as well.
Unknown Speaker 1:24:40
Yeah, that’s true. Okay, so we’ll, for a while will forward that to the next to the next meeting in February. Okay.
Unknown Speaker 1:24:59
And Phil You know sometimes the cheapest one is just putting a big boulder in the road so budget should just an idea but wanted to respond to a board member Chris You know, for me, my my transportation was you know, I’m healthy enough I could walk to downtown. Today I did drive because it was convenient and ice and etc etc. Sometimes I tried to bike while I tried to do that most times but uh, but then also it’s about convenience and speed and safety for me. It’s like if I’m going to the grocery store I’m probably driving because I need to a haul the groceries and it’ll take me you know, 45 minutes to get there by bus. And then I got to walk across a giant parking lot to then wait for a bus again to then you know, so it’s it’s gets complicated compared to other places I’ve lived. So yeah, that would be my response
Unknown Speaker 1:26:04
should we consider a transportation board rideshare or carpool?
Unknown Speaker 1:26:13
Something to consider. Okay, so we’ve covered the items for the upcoming agenda. Are there any other comments from the board and we can move to an adjournment if I can get a motion?
Unknown Speaker 1:26:39
Motion to adjourn.
Unknown Speaker 1:26:43
Second.
Unknown Speaker 1:26:45
All in favor say aye. Aye. Meeting adjourned insured
Transcribed by https://otter.ai