Transportation Advisory Board – May 2023

Video Description:
Transportation Advisory Board – May 2023

Read along below:

Unknown Speaker 0:00
Good evening, everybody

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started our capitation advisory board may 2023 6pm. Call to order

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your local

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Taylor with

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David McInerney,

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state minor. And Chris.

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Okay, we’ll move on to approving the minutes of the preceding meeting of April 10. Do any board members have any comments or corrections to that?

Unknown Speaker 0:44
To comments, page one. Number three.

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The December meeting was held on the 12th. Not the night, that occurs in two places.

Unknown Speaker 0:58
And on page nine, second to the last paragraph, he agreed in part, the revised crash report status crash being the adequate

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that’s it for me.

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age six,

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number six,

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we were talking about reviewing the bylaws. And as mentioned that I they were reviewed last April, and that I suggested we should review them again, but actually think we’re good. We just need to all have the newest documents.

Unknown Speaker 1:50
Say that I said that exactly.

Unknown Speaker 2:07
I think there will be changes to the minutes from the April 10. Meeting.

Unknown Speaker 2:13
We can move on to communications from staff.

Unknown Speaker 2:19
Good evening, or members? Do

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we need a motion to?

Unknown Speaker 2:33
Need a motion to approve the minutes as they’ve been amended.

Unknown Speaker 2:39
I move to approve minutes.

Unknown Speaker 2:42
As amended. seconded.

Unknown Speaker 2:51
All those in favor say aye. Aye.

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Opposed?

Unknown Speaker 2:59
Now move on to communications staff. Thank you, Stacy. Appreciate it.

Unknown Speaker 3:05
I’m Phil Greenwald, transportation planning manager with the city. Want to introduce Jim and instead to talk a little bit about the Vision Zero update that we presented to city council on April 25. So I’ll turn it over to Jim for that report.

Unknown Speaker 3:21
Numbers, Chairman,

Unknown Speaker 3:24
just want to give you an update on where we’re at with digit zero, as you’re aware that on April 25 2023, Council adopted using zero via resolution. So we are moving forward. The next step is the formation of a task force. It’s currently underway. We’re currently identifying stakeholders, and preparing for an advertisement to

Unknown Speaker 3:48
for inviting some of the residents who may want to

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volunteer to be on the task force anticipating maybe some 20 to 30 members on that whole task force and our stakeholders as well as as

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the some of the residents what we would also throw out a today’s today’s meeting is how does

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advisory boards want to be represented?

Unknown Speaker 4:12
In the past, some of the members have indicated an interest in

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this task force.

Unknown Speaker 4:20
We would anticipate that you would have a strong, strong force in that so I’m not sure if you want to decide tonight or put it to

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a

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given a month to the next meeting and then make a decision. So I’m just going to think about

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the discussion further.

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We’re also working on currently on our staffing needs for Vision Zero.

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We’ve undertaken evaluation of our existing staffing our existing FTEs that are currently in the public works department.

Unknown Speaker 4:52
You have currently an unfilled position that we’re no longer at we did a reorg a few months ago we no longer need

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About your acquisition. So we are looking to shift that over to a

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Vision Zero manager coordinator to start taking the lead on this program.

Unknown Speaker 5:13
We’re currently looking at a human resources to determine the details of that position. Because the job description and look like What is the pay rate going to be, they will process what is called an add change for him to change that position over it is funded through other other funds, the water in the sewer fund, it would happen they’ll ship it over to the street fund. That is underway now. We’re also evaluating the staffing needs city wide

Unknown Speaker 5:39
for implementation of Vision Zero as part of the 20/24 budgeting process. So that will be an ongoing endeavor. We’re also starting an RFP, request for proposals for consulting services to assist with the documentation and basically crafting of the action plan.

Unknown Speaker 6:01
Other items, we’re also evaluating budget needs for Vision Zero for not only this year, where are we going to initiate some dollars or $5,000 to funding the beginning the action plan, as well as budgeting for 2024.

Unknown Speaker 6:18
So what we’d be looking for is what we’ve already proposed several 100 400,000 in next year CIP, to initiate a zero for some projects, we’ll also be putting money into our operating budget, which is where we fund a lot of our signal improvements, some of the small scale signing and striping. So those budget those items will be ongoing or budgeted as part of for 2024.

Unknown Speaker 6:44
One of the other items, which came up from the actually mapped to the council meeting, we are will be applying for a safe streets and roads for all grant to assist us with funding the action plan.

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That’s where we’re at today.

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Do you want to make a decision about who wants to the

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passwords or you want to think about it, we

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can open up the comments.

Unknown Speaker 7:24
A will I would volunteer but I think it would be appropriate depending on when the task force comes to be to maybe wait for other members

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to really actually get a maybe a more diverse also expanded Outlook. So

Unknown Speaker 7:46
Kim Jong Un the task force’s Do you think you’ll have, like one for each ward or anything in one for each neighborhood?

Unknown Speaker 7:55
For the whole city, this is the test was for creation, creating the action plan. Action Plan will detail how we kind of take on Vision Zero. There may be future task forces for individual areas of the city that could be part of the action plan.

Unknown Speaker 8:12
We’ll just have to see how we decide to craft it. So you’re thinking 20 participants in one big group? Is that what you’re

Unknown Speaker 8:19
visualizing a taskforce very similar to the city recent climate Emergency Task Force, which had like 20 to 30 members? I don’t want to look at it. I don’t want to say you know some offers up to engage with some of this. I don’t want to say no. You just have to see what we put out an advertisement for volunteers. What comes out of it.

Unknown Speaker 8:39
That’s fair enough.

Unknown Speaker 8:42
I agree with board member Wicklund, that maybe we should get through the interviews and have a few more board members appointed and see. See? Who has his time and interest?

Unknown Speaker 9:03
If we wait a month with the youth our chance to put someone on the task force? Absolutely not. Okay. Then I agree that there is that wisdom and media at least a month?

Unknown Speaker 9:19
Yeah, I would echo that. I would think for your representation for our board. We probably don’t want more than unpin to possibly Max three. I wouldn’t want to take away seats from other stakeholders where we’re already involved in it, obviously, tangibly from sitting on the board itself. So that’s just my thoughts on that.

Unknown Speaker 9:58
The task force

Unknown Speaker 10:00
meetings be public meetings open to the public? Yeah, I’d anticipate this to be

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a public forum kind of thing for

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open to the public to sit in and listen.

Unknown Speaker 10:14
Yes, great.

Unknown Speaker 10:21
Mr. Angstadt? I have one other question. And that is do you have

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a source of information you could provide to tam that explains in greater detail, the elements of Vision Zero and what the taskforce would be expected to accomplish?

Unknown Speaker 10:40
I certainly we can put something together from previous presentations and

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kind of outline of what we would envision an action plan to look like.

Unknown Speaker 10:52
Or if with components of it based on what we’re seeing in other communities, as well as the Vision Zero network.

Unknown Speaker 11:01
The next meeting, okay, great.

Unknown Speaker 11:04
So

Unknown Speaker 11:09
the next step is the central Elementary School traffic update that was requested by US News. So, again, I’ll turn it over to shebang stop for more information on that. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 11:21
So

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central Elementary is school, kind of west central part of the Western mainstream. It is surrounded by four streets, Fourth Avenue, Fifth Avenue,

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the south,

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east by grace and in the west by Gay Street.

Unknown Speaker 11:45
There’s been a lot of talk about that the area. I’ve heard from one of the neighbors saying that the signing and school zones are inadequate or outdated. Staffs done a number of reviews of the area and just wanted to let them know that the siting of striking in the area is in accordance with our standards for the city.

Unknown Speaker 12:08
But that doesn’t mean you can’t add a few more things we met with the residents back

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several months back in August, before the last school year or just as the school year started.

Unknown Speaker 12:21
We talked about some adjustments to some of the striping some assignment area. What we then took on with our operations team was we adjusted

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and added some crosswalk striping at 14 gay for the Boston 15 Gay. We also restriped the mid block crossing that was on the 400 block of Gay Street.

Unknown Speaker 12:41
We added crosswalk signing bras to essentially that crosswalk.

Unknown Speaker 12:46
We also identified in our fields, meeting a number of the stop signs at all these intersections replaced beyond the crosswalks so that someone vehicle stopping would be stopping right in the front end of the crosswalk walking faster. And so we have operations can shift the whole day stop signs to be basically in front of the crosswalk so that a vehicle will stop before the crosswalk.

Unknown Speaker 13:14
He then also

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we talked about adjusting some of the school zone signing or the flashers are we did adjust one of those and extended into those school zone areas.

Unknown Speaker 13:27
We also did propose the extension of the school zone on Fifth that has not yet been accomplished yet that requires shifting one of the flashers and we have our our traffic signal team has been

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working towards that but he still has not been accomplished we hope to have it done before the start of the next school year.

Unknown Speaker 13:51
In addition to that we’ve also been collecting

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pedestrian data and speed data at initially afford them Ross

Unknown Speaker 14:01
you get a request for four way stops at that intersection. So we analyze that data analyze that intersection for the establishment of alway crossing stop science. That was done in September of 2022. It did not meet the criteria, of course PCD and no Uniform Traffic Control Devices. So that intersection remains as is

Unknown Speaker 14:23
we also evaluated the Accident history at those intersections. We’ve heard that there’s significant number of accidents there so we went back about five years and look at four of those awkward those intersections that was a total of five accidents

Unknown Speaker 14:40
over over a five year span. What’s it’s interesting to know that those five crashes for them involves people disregarding stop signs.

Unknown Speaker 14:50
also evaluated. There’s a lot of pedestrians because it is a school so influx of school of kids, you know, twice twice a day

Unknown Speaker 15:00
I’m writing in the parking. We looked at the pedestrian and bike accident history, those were intersections. And we went back 20 years

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and forth. And bras was the only intersection that had a pedestrian related crash

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of all those four intersections in 20 years. So part of the challenge with with looking at this area is what what we hear about residents about accidents, we hear about them about safety. We’re trying to figure out what problem we’re trying to solve.

Unknown Speaker 15:29
So we are currently collecting data again, in this area, we will be

Unknown Speaker 15:35
on all four the roadways, we will be evaluating, evaluating all for the intersections, see the warrant stop signs, we anticipate that work to be done within the next two weeks.

Unknown Speaker 15:46
We committed to that to the city manager. So we will be providing that.

Unknown Speaker 15:52
Within this Friday,

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we’ll also be working with the school district, we’re gonna be scheduling meetings with them that work over the summer to see what are the issues that they are seeing, and then addressing them prior to the start of school.

Unknown Speaker 16:08
And then over the summer, we will our operation staff will be restriping all those crosswalks anticipating for school to start and ensure that they are highly visible. We’re also looking at additional schools on boss to see if that’s warrants to be established.

Unknown Speaker 16:25
And that they address some of the residents concerns. The speeds on fourth, fifth and last are 25 miles per hour now.

Unknown Speaker 16:34
The speed school zone, it’s a 20. And according to state statutes, the street is posted

Unknown Speaker 16:41
30 miles per hour.

Unknown Speaker 16:44
And that was the update I have for that area.

Unknown Speaker 16:50
Any comments from the board on the central Elementary School discussion?

Unknown Speaker 16:58
Yeah, thanks, Jim. Just a question on the next study in the next couple of weeks, is school gets out soon.

Unknown Speaker 17:07
So the rain i i went there drove there on for, you know, I couldn’t cross gay for at least five minutes because there was 100 kids getting out of school. So I’m just curious if this study will include also maybe during the, you know, IBV as a flashing light, saying 20 miles an hour,

Unknown Speaker 17:28
on day, but then also realize there’s 100 kids trying to get home. So I’m just trying to figure out how we do this study, and at what time of day.

Unknown Speaker 17:38
So when we look at

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the accounts, we do them basically gonna be doing them over three days. So look at the data over that. There’s all three of those days for 24 hours for each day. So we count the data, we pull all that data, and then look at the warrants what is necessary for the warrants.

Unknown Speaker 17:58
The traffic guy, so I’d have to defer to Kyle, exactly what those warrants are. No one is, depending on the amount of vehicles per day,

Unknown Speaker 18:07
pedestrians, not sure what the other ones might be.

Unknown Speaker 18:12
But they do look at kind of a number of items as part of that analysis.

Unknown Speaker 18:21
Yeah, so we’re currently collecting data right now, we’re almost completed with that. And school does that in three weeks. But most of the changes while I make during any department school is during summer, usually when you make changes throughout school year, people are very easily routines. So it’s very hard to get them to notice the changes. So Middle School is not a very good time especially comes to

Unknown Speaker 18:46
kind of safety in general. So make those improvements then. But the data we’re collecting is kind of a multi approach where we have the attritional relay tubes that you see on the roads, we’ve also invested in a couple of radar units. So they’re off the road, you do not see him in the road at all. And they collect us the data. And then we also had video collection of the intersections to see pedestrian counts, bicycle counts, and also

Unknown Speaker 19:14
incident reporting to see if there’s any close calls and like that, so our injury is going through that day right now to get into a presentable format.

Unknown Speaker 19:25
And then, just a

Unknown Speaker 19:28
just a broad question, the end etcd.

Unknown Speaker 19:32
You know, like I was, you know, when, when I talked to engineers, they always refer to that document. And,

Unknown Speaker 19:40
you know, and I read the NAC to more so and in a kind of butt heads a little bit. So it’s I’m just wondering, how many guidelines do we need to follow, versus maybe what’s just the right thing to do.

Unknown Speaker 19:57
So our current standards is Tuesday.

Unknown Speaker 20:00
etcd is kind of a federally accepted standard for traffic engineering for signing striping. When you do deviate from that code, it does incur more risk to the city if using non standard approaches. So even some NACTO stuff follows and etcd, but

Unknown Speaker 20:18
doesn’t necessarily go with it. So and then something about something that may or may not help or may cause an issue, instead of taking more risk on that part, versus being able to defer to MCD then show that that’s a standard practice in engineering fields. So it’s more of a legal.

Unknown Speaker 20:36
Yes. As far as that there’s, there’s options. But as far as the state standards and city code is we use that and TCG in the Colorado, fall traffic code.

Unknown Speaker 20:48
Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 20:54
So I’ll just add to that, I think one of the opportunities of Vision Zero would be to take a look at some of those standards that have been utilized in the past, and then maybe opportunities to adopt others.

Unknown Speaker 21:08
As companies get it’s embedded in our code, and adoption of the model traffic code. State statute. So that’s what we follow. So we’d have to, there are there are ways around that with basically adopted parts of model traffic code. So perfectly provisions, the only action plan would be to take a look at that, and it may be requiring some revisions.

Unknown Speaker 21:34
I think the opportunities will be there.

Unknown Speaker 21:37
And just for other port numbers, because remember, Chris was asking, Na

Unknown Speaker 21:44
Na CTO is National Association of city traffic officials, or city transportation officials.

Unknown Speaker 22:05
Thank you, Jim.

Unknown Speaker 22:08
So one item from staff up there no more questions. We just have the org recruitment process update, you’ll see four members up there.

Unknown Speaker 22:18
Or active members that we’d like to get back up to seven, eventually.

Unknown Speaker 22:24
Two of you have volunteered Thank you very much. Board member Chris and board member Lena for volunteering of the times, I think Stacy has put together some number of times for us to choose from. We have four people that applied to the transportation advisory board for the next group of folks. One of them is under 18 years old, so not eligible. So we have three members that are really eligible eligible members, it’s great to see the excitement of a younger person who wants to get involved in transportation. So I, I wish we had different rules, but we don’t. So

Unknown Speaker 23:01
we’ll interview three different folks,

Unknown Speaker 23:04
when we put this together later in May so appreciate your time on that. If you have any questions, let me know. But we’re just just to give everybody some information, we’re on our way to doing those interviews, then we’ll get them to California in June and then Council will be able to take our recommendations, we can make recommendations or we don’t, we can choose. So there’s a lot of flexibility. I think our partner as far as what we provide to counsel that we should try to make a recommendation if we can and make sure we feel good about the folks that were standing up. So just want to let you know where we were in the process. So if there are any questions, I’m happy to answer.

Unknown Speaker 23:48
All is it possible to leave application process open to where we might have five applicants.

Unknown Speaker 23:56
Unfortunately, the application process is pretty strict as far as the time the deadline. So we’ve passed our deadline that opens it up to this next step in the process. I wish we could do that as well. But we’ll have to see how many people we get on board and see if we need to do this again at the end of the year. Hopefully we do not because we really aren’t mid year board. And that’s all of our things are under June 30. All of our terms run to June 30 of the year. So we have to renew on Ember terms, ending June 30 2026. So we’ll have to pick two of the three for that. And there’s one unexpired regular member term ending June 30 2025. Just based on how we had resignations over the past and what we left behind. So that’s what we’ll have to do is figure out that’ll be probably the

Unknown Speaker 24:46
biggest part of our recommendation to city councilors who should get longer terms and who should get shorter term or

Unknown Speaker 24:54
we don’t have to fill all those spaces either. So we don’t have to recommend that all this has been

Unknown Speaker 25:00
No.

Unknown Speaker 25:01
is Did I understand you to say that at the end of the year, we could have another open application for mid year? I’m taking into that, because we’re doing that on the airport Advisory Board, which is also important. So

Unknown Speaker 25:15
we are doing that we’re doing to do replacements on that board, because we’ve had a number of resignations to people moving away. So

Unknown Speaker 25:23
I don’t see the difference my in my mind. So if we don’t have a full board, let’s see if that’s possible. Okay, thanks.

Unknown Speaker 25:33
At our previous meeting,

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gentleman named Garrison from sunrise drive, spoke during the public invited to be heard portion of the meeting. And he expressed an interest in becoming a cab member. Is he one of the three candidates?

Unknown Speaker 25:53
I can’t say but

Unknown Speaker 25:57
we do.

Unknown Speaker 25:59
Well, if you can’t say I guess my question is, if he’s not, would it be appropriate to reach out to him and remind him that if he was not one of our candidates, we could not reach out to him? Okay.

Unknown Speaker 26:24
That’s it from staff. Thank you very much.

Unknown Speaker 26:28
Now, the roll comments from our public input. And it looks like we have Don and Ruth clays and to speak.

Unknown Speaker 26:40
Come right up here.

Unknown Speaker 26:52
Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 26:57
I thank you for letting me speak with you tonight. My name is Ruth Clay’s. My husband and I are residents of Firestone, Colorado. However, we come in to Longmont every single day.

Unknown Speaker 27:09
The reason I’m here tonight is to question you about the feasibility of having extending a bike path from i along Colorado 19. Up to

Unknown Speaker 27:21
sandstone Ranch, you’re avid bikers. And we would just be it would be so nice if I could actually bike into work in the morning or to my doctor and then back home and feel safe. 119 is just so horrendous, especially in the morning, if you’ve ever traveled on that in the same way at night. And I don’t know what the feasibility is of connecting those two areas would be and perhaps I need to talk to Frederick Firestone as well and figure out what their plan is, if that is part of the plan. So that’s what I’m bringing to you tonight. And I’m hoping that you may consider that for in the future.

Unknown Speaker 27:57
Questions for me?

Unknown Speaker 28:08
Thank you. Thank you for the comments. If you have anything else you can add that we can definitely look into that or or ask.

Unknown Speaker 28:17
And you’re probably right, it would involve probably a multi jurisdictional kind of conversation. Okay, great. Thank you very much.

Unknown Speaker 28:26
Go ahead.

Unknown Speaker 28:27
I don’t know if you want to save it to the end. We’ve got quite a bit from RTD. So I’m just wondering, I can really quickly address that or I could talk to her back.

Unknown Speaker 28:39
Great.

Unknown Speaker 28:41
So we are working with Firestone Weld County

Unknown Speaker 28:46
to try to extend a path that goes from you mean reservoir which will be a connection to sandstone ranch very soon. We’re working on that connection to go east over to the same thing, State Park

Unknown Speaker 29:02
and connect with those trail systems. So we are working with the folks we have some Transportation Improvement Planning dollars or program dollars $2. From region definitely from Council governments to start designing and governance construction dollars to to get at least one phase going. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 29:26
Okay, we can move on to the RTD presentation, because I know that’s probably the bulk of our time tonight.

Unknown Speaker 29:38
Just a real quick introduction.

Unknown Speaker 29:41
So we work with these folks very closely. These are the staff members from the Regional Transportation District. They’re not elected members. We did invite the elected board members to this meeting a little bit later in the process than I would have liked so I apologize for that one person was in Spain. So we did. We do have one of our board member

Unknown Speaker 30:00
wasn’t stain so she did not want to partake even virtually on this one. But the other I did not hear back from another board member, but I apologize for not letting him know, sooner. But I just did want to make it very clear that this is not all these are not policy folks, these are staff members just like us. So just appreciate your you told them how kind and gentle you guys are as far as a board. And so just wanted to pass that along. Thank you very much. And here’s my hellos to kind of kick things off from the RTD side.

Unknown Speaker 30:32
Thank you Good evening, tab members and Councilwoman, my name is Rose. I’m a senior service planner scheduler for RTD service development division. I’m here to give an update with several of my colleagues on the local regional service, special services and long range planning projects that we have ongoing right now. We introduced the team real quick scope through here. We have Filkins as our service planner, schedule one, we have Kristin, who is our planning project manager, we have Lea Monty pi, who’s the project manager for engineering. And we have Patrick Stanley, who is our manager for engineering programs.

Unknown Speaker 31:13
So we’re going to tag team it

Unknown Speaker 31:16
to keep it moving. Just real quick, do you have your overview, we have quite a few topics to cover per request, we are going to give you an update on the fixed route services. Quick update on a special services, our project manager of special services unfortunately, could not be here tonight. So if there are any follow up questions, we’ll be happy to take those questions back and get you the answers information that you might be. We’re also going to go quickly over the future plant services as well as give you an update on Northwest Rail and dylanglen Station. And then to close it off and give you a quick update on steel 119 BRT.

Unknown Speaker 32:00
I think everybody is familiar with that project as well. Okay, great. All

Unknown Speaker 32:04
right, gets to go.

Unknown Speaker 32:07
Update.

Unknown Speaker 32:12
Greg Belkin, our TD and it’s a pleasure to meet with all of you. And I’m gonna go over our basic

Unknown Speaker 32:20
fixed route service for long lat. And so what we’re doing is we’re comparing last year’s August one board to pre pandemic one board, and basically what our costs, this is what our costs were here, August 22.

Unknown Speaker 32:40
Versus August 18th. And you can tell on August 18, we spent 29 $2,950,200.

Unknown Speaker 32:51
This last year, it was 1,000,815 687,000 was our total cost here in Longmont for the local services. And this breaks down each of the local routes the bolt, as you can see, like the J has been suspended, the LX has been suspended.

Unknown Speaker 33:13
We are in you can also compare our total service hours

Unknown Speaker 33:21
and our frequency that we’re running. Comparing the two

Unknown Speaker 33:28
any questions as I’m going through on these if you see anything that stands out, please feel free to to ask.

Unknown Speaker 33:39
And this is our statistics going daily boardings average daily boardings going back to 2016. And you can see that it really takes a hit when that pandemic in 2020 and we are not back to where we were three years ago. And

Unknown Speaker 34:04
so this is our numbers here.

Unknown Speaker 34:07
I know that

Unknown Speaker 34:10
like the bulk for example, the between here and

Unknown Speaker 34:16
older I mean it’s it’s almost not it’s a little more than half of what we were running on our daily boardings, the locals seem to be coming back a little better, but still half of what we were boarding pre pandemic

Unknown Speaker 34:34
and this is our

Unknown Speaker 34:37
local boardings, it just in total for the area up here

Unknown Speaker 34:43
year by year by route. And this is just the the local what we call the 300 Rats 323-320-4326 and 327. And you can see there where we’re we’re not bad

Unknown Speaker 35:00
back to where

Unknown Speaker 35:02
we would like to be.

Unknown Speaker 35:06
Right here, again, the regional boardings, 2016 to 2022.

Unknown Speaker 35:14
And you can see if we’re going, you know, we’re doing okay, we’re holding pretty steady. And then we had 81% Drop in 2020. Understandable, and you know, 2021, we got back, you know, 64%, increase over 2020. And we’re back up, you know, 24%, year over year 2020 to 2021.

Unknown Speaker 35:43
Special Services, this would be your flex ride.

Unknown Speaker 35:48
And

Unknown Speaker 35:50
in, the way it’s broke down is how many in service hours, we have for the Flex, right. And so as you can see, here, we’re running. Again, post pandemic, we haven’t recovered the number of service hours, that we’re running pre pandemic, and we’re running about for 2020 to about 4400

Unknown Speaker 36:18
hours a year.

Unknown Speaker 36:21
And so there again, it’s just

Unknown Speaker 36:25
why your ship will dictate when things come back.

Unknown Speaker 36:35
Do you have any data or have you done any studies as to why you haven’t returned to full ridership after COVID? You know,

Unknown Speaker 36:42
and I’m really help.

Unknown Speaker 36:47
There’s a lot of theories. You know, if you look at everything as a whole, a lot of our commuter traffic

Unknown Speaker 36:55
is not so people that are commuting from Longmont to Denver, that would have rode the LX, or would have rode the LD, or not commuting to Denver.

Unknown Speaker 37:08
A lot of people are remote work.

Unknown Speaker 37:13
Things changed, you know, people learned how to maybe not go to the store as much maybe they’re ordering. You know, I mean, there’s a lot of different reasons why it hasn’t come back.

Unknown Speaker 37:28
And this is this the million dollar question is what it is, does it correlate with remote worker data from unemployment on our I’m not sure because you know, that that’s out of my

Unknown Speaker 37:43
area of expertise, comparing those two numbers.

Unknown Speaker 37:48
But I can’t tell you like,

Unknown Speaker 37:51
here’s, here’s the expert on this, I’m gonna let the more experienced team member here, take over. Here’s your clicker.

Unknown Speaker 38:00
So it actually it’s a national trend that we’re watching. And it’s not even an international trend that anywhere for transit ridership has not come back to a point that it was before COVID. We’re seeing ridership at about 75% return from pre COVID, which is actually pretty good. There are a lot of areas that are only seeing 50%. At the most, there are some areas where ridership has come back more than that, but there are far and few in between. And that is mainly because travel patterns and demand has changed. That’s due to the remote work policies for very many places that for instance, downtown Denver has maybe two at most three days per week, people coming into office and then they don’t necessarily go into office full day, they have shift work there also, because of the way routes are currently operating, because we had to suspend suspend certain routes, people are not writing as much because the services are not available. So it’s a little bit of a chicken and an egg thing.

Unknown Speaker 39:08
There are only so many resources that we have, I have to point out that we do have a driver shortage or people power problem challenge. And I’d like to say problem.

Unknown Speaker 39:19
It’s an opportunity, but we have very short operators and that makes it very hard for us to bring back all of the services that we would like to bring back yet we also have to be very conscious of taxpayers money. So we cannot just put all services back and hope that ridership comes back we have to look and see where ridership is where the demand is and make the adjustments based on that we have certain areas within the Denver Metro area where ridership has come back quite well, it said

Unknown Speaker 39:48
was one of those areas where we actually have routes where we need to add service. If we have standing bolts and we have pass ups at certain times a day. We have other routes that are very busy with a service law

Unknown Speaker 40:00
All that we’re providing yet the challenges, we cannot increase those service levels because we don’t have the operators to do. So, for loglines, it’s been pretty steady. We’re actually happy to see the numbers that we have, especially for the local routes, the boats. That’s a challenge because it is mainly a commuter route. There are some students, students are back in class, and you can see that uptick occurring for the boats, when students started to come back to see you. That is that additional ridership mainly for the flex rides.

Unknown Speaker 40:33
People, yes, travel patterns also have changed. Like Greg said, there are people now they figured out you can order certain things online, you don’t have to make all those trips. They’re coordinating better in regard to medical appointments and so forth. Were with the white long launch. That was back in 2015 14.

Unknown Speaker 40:55
We did see an immense uptick in ridership when that program came into place. If people

Unknown Speaker 41:03
decided to take the bus more often, it wasn’t that necessarily more people were riding, but those who were riding, were using the service model, which is great. That’s what it’s there for him. However, with the pandemic and are coming out a pandemic, again, the need has changed. And so we have not seen that uptick yet. Also in regard to schools, we have not quite seen the demand from the schools back that we used to have Well, before we were struggling to meet that demand. We don’t necessarily have that stroke, which is a good thing on one hand, because we don’t have to turn too many passengers now. The same time. I mean, yes, the ridership is lower. Does that answer your question? Yes. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 41:47
And I think Greg, that pretty much finished it for professional services. And I’m up next.

Unknown Speaker 41:53
I’m okay.

Unknown Speaker 41:57
Yeah, just one question related to COVID. Because now we’re trying to figure things out after

Unknown Speaker 42:04
and then obviously, we’re learning people’s patterns are changing. But then

Unknown Speaker 42:09
could you say anything of what RTD has learned, as well of, of how, hey there, how do we increase that ridership to provide service to especially the people who really, really need the service,

Unknown Speaker 42:24
it appears that we are providing the service that is needed,

Unknown Speaker 42:29
especially when it comes to the local routes. Those were the routes that pre COVID were the ones that have ridership. That was transit dependent. I don’t necessarily like to use that term either. But that’s a standard industry term, that the majority of people who were using local service were transitive, and they had no other choice. And that’s what they were using. And that has been the same for decades, I’ve been the senior service planner for the North team for

Unknown Speaker 42:58
14 years.

Unknown Speaker 43:01
And I I’ve been in the area of over 20. I’ve been doing this for over 20 years, close to 25 years now. So looking at that the trends haven’t changed.

Unknown Speaker 43:13
Who writes what you have those who write the service, and you have those who write the local service. And there’s hardly any overlap that people actually transfer from regional to local or local to regional. It’s

Unknown Speaker 43:26
actually the parking rides to get on the regional bus to get to Boulder or to Denver, or you use the local service to get around use the flex ride to get around.

Unknown Speaker 43:36
I guess what I’ve been kind of alluding to is, as you know, what one good example here in Longmont is, we do have local buses. But like this board, if we wanted to take a bus home, the last one is at eight when we leave so so that So thinking of the service industry workers that are getting off at 11? Well, so I got that type of thinking of what are we learning from COVID, and maybe the people who really need transit. Demand wise, it’s actually a bit we extended the service used to only one until at 530, later, six o’clock. And we were able to extend it a couple of years ago until seven plus, because there was some demand. We did hear that yet, when you look at who’s right, how many people are riding on average on those trips, it’s in single digits. And so for us to extend that service any later would not be using taxpayers money very well. So be aware of that. What might make sense instead of fixed route is to look at the flex right?

Unknown Speaker 44:41
And see is that the service that we would want to extend the service hours of because that would actually allow you for more flexibility to get anywhere within Longmont

Unknown Speaker 44:51
just versus having to be on a fixed route that then you can only get to specific space places specific times

Unknown Speaker 44:59
with

Unknown Speaker 45:00
At compensations back in 2012, I think we took several of the school triple outs, and merge them into, took those in service hours and merged them into the flex ride in order to provide more service on Flex. Why? Because that is where the demand is within Walmart, when you look at a map that shows to from origin destination trips within Walmart, it is everywhere. People try to go from everywhere to everywhere, all day long. And so fixed routes can only do so much and there is a demand for fixed route. Yet there is a greater demand for flex right now, even though ridership is in back in some of that has to do with the restrictions in the vehicles that are currently out there. The service that we can provide with the resources that we have

Unknown Speaker 45:51
will be look at potentially some of the other routes some other way to increase service hours or flex rides. Figure out where can those resources come from, in order to address that and allow for more flexibility. That’s definitely something that we’ve talked about multiple times, it’s definitely something that’s always up on the table as an option. It’s one thing to put the lines on the map and say you have fixed route service. This is where your taxpayers dollars go. But when they can’t really provide the service that your community needs,

Unknown Speaker 46:26
then we should take a look at that and see what can we do to make it better.

Unknown Speaker 46:35
But moving on to the next topic. So future plans service adjustments there, this is specific to pull out of 119 BRT.

Unknown Speaker 46:48
There also is, you might have heard about the reimagine RTD, the system optimization plan that was approved by the RTD board last July, July 2020. To

Unknown Speaker 47:00
two pieces to it, I’ve only included the 119 part, but I can definitely get some information related to the system optimization plan as well. So for the 119 BRT, we worked with staff and with a consultant very closely to make sure that this local transport network feeder plan for Longmont was incorporated as part of the highway 190

Unknown Speaker 47:30
project. So that when the 190 BRT project comes online, and currently we’re looking at 2026, that we could then have the opportunity to restructure the local network

Unknown Speaker 47:44
based on connections, improving connections to the 119 VRT, which currently the bulk of the the JSON standard, but the bolt operates, yet, there are gonna be some changes, there going to be some eight major locations that stations versus just stops. And so the network plan was created to allow for those better overall network connections.

Unknown Speaker 48:16
Not sure how well you can see this on the map, you have the current network. And on the left hand side, and on the right hand side is that local proposed feeder network, you can see the underlying gray lines where current services versus the colored lines to where the proposed new routing czar. Again, those routings were based on every input from city staff, based on where at that time in 2018 2019, there were centers, destination centers, origin destination centers, as well as these proposed future stations for the 119 BRT.

Unknown Speaker 48:51
These are these lines on the map. The plan is attached to the 190 and BRT.

Unknown Speaker 48:58
If this doesn’t make sense, when the BRT comes online, we will have a conversation, say what is it that is going to make sense?

Unknown Speaker 49:07
Because it makes no it again, if I put lines on the map, and it doesn’t serve the community,

Unknown Speaker 49:15
I’m not doing my job. On this map. The one thing that I do like is we were able to push this

Unknown Speaker 49:22
was the 328, which would go over to Walmart and the hospital, which we know there is demand there. And

Unknown Speaker 49:35
yet, it hasn’t been enough for us to establish that fixed route. The demand is in low, single single digits. One Two ever so often people asking even the flex White’s one or two people ever so often, it’s not that high demand. However, in the future, never say never. That’s why the line is there. And that’s why we want to make sure that we have that opportunity.

Unknown Speaker 50:00
It should allow for itself.

Unknown Speaker 50:04
And we can, we can make it happen.

Unknown Speaker 50:07
Also, just real quick. So you get an idea what that it will be service increase, to have that new network. And these are the numbers, the table can look at it every single number, but just know that it would be an increase in service, we move this forward now when when it comes on line, again, we will take a look and say what’s going to make sense what’s warranted, we do have service standards that we have to follow. So we can’t just willy Willy put out service just because it’s in a plant somewhere. And I have to see what the resources are that we have in hand. And again, over the next couple of years, we’re going to be closely watching what the travel patterns are, where the demands are. And then through our regular service changes, which we do three times a year, January, May in August or September, usually,

Unknown Speaker 50:56
we’ll address that and put the service into place. That’s going to make sense.

Unknown Speaker 51:03
It was a question about this map. And I’m glad he is you know, just had a conversation with Phil about you know, Iron Horse departments aren’t serviced. And I have some friends over there that can’t get into town.

Unknown Speaker 51:16
And then also, there’s a hospital over there.

Unknown Speaker 51:19
I think getting the details is kind of pointless right now. But I’m curious if we could learn how this process goes about how long this process takes. So like you say, once the BRT goes online, there might be adjustments, how long does it take to adjust? Because,

Unknown Speaker 51:39
you know, time time is of an essence if you want people to use the bus. So the question, usually, if we’re working on regular service changes from one server stage to the other, we’re working six plus months ahead. That’s just regular service changes. We’re working on something that is a big project, we are already having these conversations, this is already on our radar that we need to make sure as we progress with one nine team. And we’re looking to potentially make some adjustments even to the BRT patterns, because of travel pattern changes, that we keep a very close eye on what the travel patterns and the needs are within the community. So implementation wise, it would happen with the service change that implements the BRT, the 119, BRT in 26. Over the planning process is already ongoing. We’re already meeting with stakeholders, with eight local agencies, we’ve had some public meetings as we move forward and get into 2020, or later, 2024 and into 25. That’s where we’re going to do some specific outreach in the quarter and long, long and Boulder, with the public specific to get that information. We’ve already done several surveys, we’re going to continue to do some more surveys to get that information. And we will then look to put that plan together.

Unknown Speaker 52:59
My team has to have it done.

Unknown Speaker 53:02
Six to nine months ahead of when the implementation happens. So we’re say 2026, middle 2025, fall 2025, I have to have something that says this is what we’re going to look to go with, because we have to know what our resources are, etc.

Unknown Speaker 53:19
As well as publicize it.

Unknown Speaker 53:22
That answer question.

Unknown Speaker 53:25
Yeah, mainly.

Unknown Speaker 53:28
It is very complicated.

Unknown Speaker 53:31
For regular service change, we have

Unknown Speaker 53:35
a spreadsheet, that is an 11 by 17,

Unknown Speaker 53:39
five, eight font for each service things, it is seven to eight pages long. That those are all the details that we have to follow each service change. So

Unknown Speaker 53:50
that was the big picture 30,000.

Unknown Speaker 53:55
You got,

Unknown Speaker 53:58
hey,

Unknown Speaker 54:01
I noticed on the new plan that we go back,

Unknown Speaker 54:06
if you don’t mind,

Unknown Speaker 54:08
me reducing service on the northeast side.

Unknown Speaker 54:12
But when I look at them talking about the 323, which is the green line on the left map.

Unknown Speaker 54:19
And

Unknown Speaker 54:21
we have a lot of if you look at the very top hook there, the 323 ends at Santa Fe, whereas if it went to the end of that block all the way to Alpine it would actually intersect with all the high density housing and senior housing that we have there. It’s a little far for them to get to that 323. And I noticed on the change in service that you’ve only lost about 200 riders.

Unknown Speaker 54:49
But on a 324 You’ve lost about 400 riders since COVID. So I’m concerned about centralizing service more when there

Unknown Speaker 55:00
There’s a lot of activity and a lot of building on the east side. And honestly, up in that area,

Unknown Speaker 55:07
the poverty levels that you know, 48%, and persons of color are over 50% in that neighborhood. So I would think it’s an underserved area and should get more bus service. So as I mentioned, as we’re going forward,

Unknown Speaker 55:22
these are just lines on the map, you have to have a plan to attach to the 119, B or T plan. So that as we moving forward, we could have the ability to make these changes to make this network adjustment.

Unknown Speaker 55:38
So how long are we going to be without service on the northeast side, but at this point, the ridership and demand and we can have that conversation.

Unknown Speaker 55:47
This is where I’ll rely on city staff to tell me, they would know much better than I would as to what exactly is going on, we keep an eye on what the development is, and so forth. Before an error like that, we should have that conversation. And we should look to see if we can make that change earlier than waiting to implement the plan. It’s definitely something that can be done, I guess, to be more specific, I think if you made the change to go all the way down all the way west on Olympia and turning around on Alpine you get a lot more ridership there. Because you’d intersect a lot of housing, that, you know, for me, I live up in that neighborhood, it takes me a mile to ride my bike to catch that. But that’s my my favorite route to catch. And every time I pass those units, I think, well, I don’t think the seniors are going to be able to make this bus because they’re not going to get on the bike and they’re not going to walk that far. And then you know, there’s all the

Unknown Speaker 56:39
regular apartment complexes there too. And I just think it would be easier if it came down all the way Olympia and turned around on Alpine. It just makes more sense to me. Yeah. So the staff, we can, we can certainly look at that and take those into into consideration when we’re talking about the actual details when they come out with the actual route changes, which again, Natalie says said, although won’t be exactly what you see on this map, a lot of things have changed land use wise, since we worked on this two years ago for us.

Unknown Speaker 57:13
2018 Gosh.

Unknown Speaker 57:19
Yeah, we were originally pushing just for some of the things that we saw out there in 2018. So we knew the things that were going to change, we just wanted to kind of get the idea that there’d be more service. So I would look at the service numbers, or that I looked at the actual lines on the map, and just understand that we’re gonna get more hours of service, and more variety of bus routes than we have today. And so those are the things we can we can we can play with, with the nuances, the details, make sure those are right, there may not be overlap on some of these things where we see overlap on these maps. Who knows, but the details will be worked out as we get closer to the idea of implementation. And then they go through a whole process where they come back out to the cities that aren’t affected by the route changes, or the new service, and work with actual law or community to figure it out, what kind of comments if somebody says,

Unknown Speaker 58:15
Hey, this is not going to serve this location, if you’re just moved the buzzer, a block or a block that way they do listen to that, and they take it into consideration. We also have to go through title six, our civil rights group evaluates every service change that we do. So as we move forward, any of these changes, they would look at that. And that’s one of those things that they probably would point out to us and say, Hey, you haven’t hairy over here. You need to address this.

Unknown Speaker 58:42
And then I have one other quick question. And that is it’s new for long on but do you factor Vision Zero into your, your formula? Yes, we will have to, because it will slow down the buses. It makes a big difference. You might think a minute here or there doesn’t that it adds up quite isn’t I was actually thinking during the staff presentation that was kind of talked about

Unknown Speaker 59:05
where you’re planning this and then we also have to keep an eye out, depending on what the mitigation is for the speeds. If they’re speed humps, or narrowing of the roads, it affects operations, we might not be able to get a bus down the street all of a sudden has happened before.

Unknown Speaker 59:22
So just a thought is might make more sense to have a wider pattern, in other words to go around the area’s rather than to be more centralized, because of Vision Zero.

Unknown Speaker 59:35
You know, just cogitate on that as just an input. Yeah, at this point, we have a son Kaufman as our main hub.

Unknown Speaker 59:44
We’re going to have more than one station soon. Also as a main hub, we’re going to be looking at

Unknown Speaker 59:52
Main Street as a spine so to say as we’re looking to also have another parking light on the North End and highway 66 and 287. So

Unknown Speaker 1:00:00
Looking at these different locations to spread out that service, and not necessarily have everything and all three hubs for sure. But Longhorn station in the plans is the hub to allow for local and regional transfers and to allow for that future rail connection so that we have it all in place. As it comes to the other locations, we’re going to be looking at spreading it out a bit more to allow for that wider net.

Unknown Speaker 1:00:28
Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 1:00:33
For this one, I just wanted to point out real quick that we didn’t include the frequencies of the service, which it wasn’t in the other two slides, I just want to make sure that he had that. So you can see when it was 30 minutes versus 60 minutes, it’s not necessarily the same frequency all day. And then we say 3060, then 30 is in the am and pm and 60s, midday. If you want more details on that I can happily provide that. But at this point, just just the basic facts.

Unknown Speaker 1:01:05
It’s Thursday updates, Chris. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 1:01:14
Good evening.

Unknown Speaker 1:01:16
Good evening.

Unknown Speaker 1:01:18
I’m Chris Quinn. And I am one of the project managers on the fair study that our team has been conducting. Got a lot of slides, I’ll try to go just in the manner. In the interest of time, I’ll try to go through them fairly quickly. So please, if there is additional information on any one of these slides that you want me to focus on happy to do that. But I’ll try to bust through them quickly. So not to get too into the details. Going into the study, we had three main good three goals, overarching goal is equity. Make sure especially and I know you know Natalie just mentioned the fact that especially since the pandemic, one of the big ridership changes we’ve seen is a lot more of our riders are people

Unknown Speaker 1:02:02
that, like Natalie, I don’t like the word transit dependent, but people who have no other choice but to ride transit.

Unknown Speaker 1:02:09
So London makes sure that now that that’s really become a big chunk of our core ridership group that we made sure that anything that we come up with is

Unknown Speaker 1:02:19
supports those customers. Also, over time we’ve heard and I’m sure you guys have probably heard when you’re out in public, our TV fares are too expensive, and that they are complicated. So a girl’s equity simplicity, affordability. Real quick here, we started the public outreach portion of the study back in roughly April of April of last year had three major what we were calling engagement milestones went out to the public first in April with kind of okay, what what do you think of the current system even though we started knew the answer, people hate it, and they think it’s too expensive and confusing, but that’s exactly what we heard.

Unknown Speaker 1:03:02
Summer we came out with some real high level concepts of okay, you know, with these concepts, what would you like to see, then in the fall, we came up with two alternatives which have since merged into one alternative based on public feedback. And I will jump right into what that is now.

Unknown Speaker 1:03:24
Currently, our fares are you see in the red box on the left side of the slide, and then the proposed fares are on the right side in blue.

Unknown Speaker 1:03:37
A couple of big things to take note of one is that the regional fare has been eliminated. So we would, with the exception, we still have an airport fare before all other fares, whether you’re hopping on the L bus going to Denver or you

Unknown Speaker 1:03:55
heading somewhere around town, cost is the same. And it would be lower than the current local fare, which is $3. So that the standard what we’re now calling the standard fare, that would go down to 275. The other big thing to take note of is currently the monthly pass for a local is $114 a month, if you get a one for the regional again. So for those el services, or the airport, those two are combined, it’s $200 that would be reduced to $88. So pretty significant savings on the monthly pass with the intent of trying to reward our frequent fliers, so to speak. And then for the discount, adult discount fares, then the discount fares are applied to anybody who’s 65 and over or somebody with disabilities.

Unknown Speaker 1:04:49
fares in general, they’re half but just a couple of things here to note. For the monthly we went way down so monthly pass $27

Unknown Speaker 1:05:00
And for the discounted fares one other big thing,

Unknown Speaker 1:05:05
no local or no local, regional or airport. So if you’re subject to a discount fare, you can travel anywhere in the district with a three hour pass for $1.35, a pass to 70. And again, the monthly pass $27 for the month.

Unknown Speaker 1:05:25
I don’t know if any of you are familiar with what we’re calling we call our live program, that’s the it’s a program for people low income, it’s a specific pass for them that they can apply for it through the Colorado peek system. That’s the state’s benefits system. One of the things, what a lot of the public, especially as we were talking to nonprofits, and social service agencies, one of the things we found is,

Unknown Speaker 1:05:53
well, it’s a great discount, there are still a lot of people in need, that don’t just don’t quite qualify for it, but are still in need. So we’d like to right now, a couple of things, the discount that a live customer gets is 40%, we want to increase that to 50%. So it lines up with all of our other discount fares. And also right now, to qualify, you have to be at 185% or lower of the federal poverty level in terms of your earnings, we want to increase that to 250% of the federal poverty level.

Unknown Speaker 1:06:31
Reason The way we got to that number, it sounds nice. But also, we looked at what the minimum wages by how in and kind of apply to 10 a household basis, so that somebody making the minimum wage would qualify for this where in the past, they would not.

Unknown Speaker 1:06:50
Something else that we’ve heard as we’re doing our outreach is that there’s just a lot of low income people, they’re not even aware that the program exists. So we also want to try to reach out more to nonprofits, social service agencies, to get the word out there that this does exist. And then lastly, we also heard a lot of complaints that it is a kind of an arduous application process. So

Unknown Speaker 1:07:13
want to see if here, again, we can start forming partnerships with social service agencies and others to help with the application process. Currently, we do contract with

Unknown Speaker 1:07:24
the city and county of Denver, their social services. And it’s not just limited to people who are Denver residents. But see if we can do more of that, again, just kind of help to move the process along and make things simpler.

Unknown Speaker 1:07:38
Youth fairs. This is another big one.

Unknown Speaker 1:07:41
We are proposing for next year, a pilot program where we would have zero fare for youth. So anywhere you’re going 19 and under would ride for free the system.

Unknown Speaker 1:07:56
The reason we’re calling it a pilot is it’s

Unknown Speaker 1:07:59
fairly expensive. We expect it to be approximately $5 million a year hit on the amount of revenue we would get from the farebox. So what we’d like to do is establish this and see how much data we can get and then look to outside partners for funding, whether that’s the state of the government school districts just we’ll have our handout. But point being we really were our general manager in particular was very interested in this. The intent being

Unknown Speaker 1:08:30
you know, a lot of kids that just aren’t able to access either the schools, they want to attend employment opportunities, and we figured this would be a really good equalizer for helping out with that.

Unknown Speaker 1:08:45
For student fairs, and by students now, we mean college students. Right now we do have the semester pass, that’s something that CEU takes a participates in the Rarey campus, the EU, works great for them, because they have more traditional students. All of their campuses are well served by transit, when we’re reaching out to community colleges where we’ve had no participation. One of the things we heard is, yeah, the you know, the Metro pass is great, but we have a lot of students that are, you know, only taking one or two classes at a time, they may be coming right from work. So the idea that, that the college pass is predicated on, which is that everyone participates in it. So it’s almost like an insurance model just does not work for a community college or technical school. So what we’ve proposed instead is to create a semester pass for those schools. And they would be a student who is interested in that could just buy a semester pass and then the semester pass would be ADA dollars.

Unknown Speaker 1:09:49
And the only purpose of showing that table is just to see what the savings would be over say buying a monthly pass instead.

Unknown Speaker 1:09:59
Then what

Unknown Speaker 1:10:00
accessorized system. Currently, we do not have a live discount. So a couple of things going on here. One is that we are just we are proposing that the fares in general would be reduced for accessorize, but also that we would introduce the live discount to accessorize customers as well. So there’ll be some pretty substantial savings for low income customers that do rely on that service.

Unknown Speaker 1:10:29
So without walking through all of the pieces here, I think, really the big thing to focus on is kind of the first bullet there want to re emphasize. So adults that are using the discount fares can travel to any destination within the district, including the airport for a discount price. And the monthly passes, as I said would be I can’t have forgotten the number already to roughly $23. So I

Unknown Speaker 1:10:56
think that’s pretty going to be a pretty hit game changer about throw that out there for our customers. And then just jumping to the interest of time here again, the ego, Pat, or I’m sorry, one of the other things that we heard, and we used to have a system that was sort of similar to this, where we did provide assistance to nonprofits to help them, you know, for passive for their client populations, we’re proposing as part of this program is that we would create a an assistance program, we would start it out in a million dollars for those six social service agencies that

Unknown Speaker 1:11:37
now while we have the live program, the process as I said, you do have to apply through the state’s benefit system can take three weeks plus in order for the processing before you actually get your past, recognizing that there are agencies that serve people with immediate needs, whether it’s the homeless population, or say victims of domestic violence that need passes right away. We’d like to create a program where those services can provide apply for a train that assistance grant were we able to apply or provide them with passes.

Unknown Speaker 1:12:12
Additionally, we also want to propose recognizing also that there are certain businesses that may or may not want to take advantage of the Eagle Pass because of whatever constraints or limitations they have, that we be able to sell to them. Apply to that for them a bulk discount of 10% for a minimum of $1,500. And then also related the ICO pass. In addition to simplifying the pricing, we also have a two year contract price, because we’ve heard from a lot of businesses that given the fluctuation in prices, it’s really hard for them to do budgeting on a year to year basis trying to figure out what it’s going to cost the next year. So we figured going on a two year period that would help stabilize their prices. And given a little bit more predictability.

Unknown Speaker 1:13:00
We have, we’ve already had two virtual meetings on this. And I took out the slide that had all the events are going to be because there’s a zillion the closest event that coming up, I think on Wednesday, September, Wednesday, May 4, we will be at the hole have a pop up at the boulder farmers market. In addition, we do have a couple of more public meetings come on the coming up. One later this week.

Unknown Speaker 1:13:29
That one will be live another one next week. And then one more virtual. Those are all on our website. And in addition on our website and want to emphasize this, we do have a comment and a survey forum where you can put in comments support it, you like it, you don’t like it, there are things you like the specific things you don’t like. So love to hear any feedback that you have, of course tonight as well, but encourage you yet to get on our website down there. And the address is up there. If for some reason you don’t have the presentation in front of you just Google RTD fair study. It’s the first thing that pops up, and it’ll take you right to probably where you need to go. And I think, Oh, I took this out. But yes, this slide does show upcoming

Unknown Speaker 1:14:18
meetings that we do have

Unknown Speaker 1:14:21
one next week, attended the two live ones coming up here in Denver, but we do have two more online meetings, one in English and one in Spanish. And for all of our meetings, we’ve made sure that we’ve had one in English and one exclusively in Spanish. So

Unknown Speaker 1:14:36
yeah, that is it. So happy to answer any questions now or hand off to Patrick on the northwest. Thank you Chris.

Unknown Speaker 1:14:46
One clarifying question and then some statements but um, you said May 4, I’m assuming after May 11 and the 17 for events. Okay, sorry.

Unknown Speaker 1:15:00
They are still unable somewhere. And then just because you know, I’ve read a CPA article last week about the RTD boards voting this week, I believe on reserve for July. And yeah, so two things going on there. Yes. So the the RTD board will be doing that. And then in addition to that, I can’t remember what this was noted in the article or not. Tomorrow night, we will also be going to the board planning finance and planning committee, to just let them know that it is far as it sort of schedule has us our assumptions that we’d be going to the board of directors for, with the full package of the fare recommendations in July.

Unknown Speaker 1:15:47
One of the things we heard when we were doing outreach, especially from school districts is if you’re going to do zero fare for you.

Unknown Speaker 1:15:54
And I’m sorry, let me back up, then the intent would be that the fares would go into effect, there’s a lot of work that has to go on behind the scenes, the fares would go into effect the beginning of Jan, or first quarter of next year,

Unknown Speaker 1:16:08
preferably January. But we will be heard from the school districts as well, if you’re going to do a pilot, free fair for youth, it would work a lot better for us if you could establish that with the academic school year, which would be obviously August, September.

Unknown Speaker 1:16:25
So we’re going to the board tomorrow night to tell just kind of let them know not necessarily when asked permission. But say we’re not considering this a done deal yet, because we know you haven’t acted on it. But we want to start talking and working with our partners at the school districts and others to see exactly how this would work. And so we are going to start working on this now.

Unknown Speaker 1:16:49
So our hope, of course is that the board does approve all this in July. And so if it does, then we’ll be ready for the the zero fare for youth pilot to pick up right after the zero fare for better air, which would be

Unknown Speaker 1:17:06
July August now. So then beginning September, we would start the prepare for youth pilot so that it coincides with the school year. And then another thing about fairs because

Unknown Speaker 1:17:21
you know, you’re mentioning partners and school districts and then some buses, even here in town service some schools does the district put some money for into those routes? Or how is that collaboration but then, and then also just a general question about fares.

Unknown Speaker 1:17:38
Because you know, RTD is partly tax payer funded

Unknown Speaker 1:17:43
organization. But then we’re like, what part of the budget do the fares go? Or is it just all in a lump sum? Yeah, we’re ridership money go. So, right now, pre pandemic,

Unknown Speaker 1:17:58
the point of the pandemic, everything comes down to a but pre pandemic, we

Unknown Speaker 1:18:04
approximately 20 plus a little bit higher than that percent of our operating costs recovered by what we call the farebox recovery ratio. So Your FERS paid about 20% federal grants, and the RTD sales tax covered the remainder of that, since the pandemic, that number has plummeted, and we’re down to

Unknown Speaker 1:18:30
somewhere in the low teens, let’s say 10 13%, something like that. So

Unknown Speaker 1:18:37
our fed fares are already covering a smaller percentage of our operating costs. And that’s kind of one of the reasons we’re

Unknown Speaker 1:18:46
our current general manager has been a little bit more liberal with the in the past, when we’ve started fare studies, we’ve always had specific revenue targets in this time, we were a little bit looser with that, with the recognition that their fares already covering a lower percentage of costs. So why not just lower that and see if we can backfill that with other funds?

Unknown Speaker 1:19:10
And you had a non starter yet another question there as well. And I don’t know, I forgot what that was already. Oh, yeah. So one of the things we’d like to do, and we don’t even have a good sense of what this would be yet.

Unknown Speaker 1:19:23
You know, have our hand out to either a school districts, the state anyone.

Unknown Speaker 1:19:31
As far as zero fare for us, a few other states have done this. Washington State’s a real good example, where they have set up a grant for local transit agencies to apply for,

Unknown Speaker 1:19:43
to cover to actually cover the cost of implement of implementing that.

Unknown Speaker 1:19:48
We really just starting our lobbying efforts on that so

Unknown Speaker 1:19:54
I can’t give you any good information yet on who you really think would cover that up.

Unknown Speaker 1:20:00
that chunk of change, but we’re hoping, I guess that’s a good way to put it. We’re hoping it’s popular enough that somebody might be willing to help us.

Unknown Speaker 1:20:10
I’m hoping school districts see the value of public transit, to then also be a value to the young children to gain independence. Yeah, I think one of the challenges we may have, and this is just me speaking personally, yeah, we have pretty good school ridership.

Unknown Speaker 1:20:29
In Boulder, county, Denver, some of the suburban districts with a lot less so. So you know,

Unknown Speaker 1:20:36
I’m thinking it may be more difficult, you know, if we, when we approach and I’m making this up, say, Arapahoe County say, Well, you know, are you going to be willing to put in none of our skids. But it’s certainly something we, you know, we’re going to start the discussion on, I think it’s an interesting idea it is.

Unknown Speaker 1:20:54
I studied in a country that had no school buses, and they just had public transit, and I put down his Honda

Unknown Speaker 1:21:01
that says, Alright, this bus is now a school bus. But it’s a great way to get people into transit, for the next generation. So yeah, and following up on that, and that’s, I think, one of the reasons that is for a general manager, in particular, this has been a really important issue. She believes strongly that by introducing transit to kids, you know, that’s their way of

Unknown Speaker 1:21:26
lack of a better way, marketing it out, you know, to get what local and transit riders

Unknown Speaker 1:21:37
hearing how small a percentage of RTDs total revenue is provided by fares. I’m wondering what you study do away with fares altogether? Yeah, is it the channel going into the study?

Unknown Speaker 1:21:56
Like, as I said, in the past, we’ve typically had specific fair revenue targets, this time in, in our discussions with our, our finance department,

Unknown Speaker 1:22:07
we’ve figured if we came, if we had a reduction that was somewhere in the range of around 20%, then we could probably still get away with not having to do any service cuts, anything lower than that, then it would start to impact the amount of service hours that we can provide. So

Unknown Speaker 1:22:32
we did a lot of back and forth on this. But you know, running the financial model, going,

Unknown Speaker 1:22:39
you know, there’s always the push pull, but by lowering by eliminating the regional fare, and then even lowering all the fares, we pretty much hit rock bottom to get it. We’re at the 20% now, so anything lower than that, then we would likely see service cuts, which, you know, I’m making up a number but any, even a 5% cut and service.

Unknown Speaker 1:23:07
Look for a service planners is usually pretty painful. Yeah. So.

Unknown Speaker 1:23:15
So with the post fair reductions, you’re saying, Would still provide 20% Now we’re probably hovering around 10. Now

Unknown Speaker 1:23:28
10 Now 10% ish? Yeah. Oh, wait, I’m sorry. When the fares we said, with the

Unknown Speaker 1:23:38
with the financial model is showing I’m kind of pulling this out of my head now. So I hope I have this accurate in my mental picture.

Unknown Speaker 1:23:46
We will see,

Unknown Speaker 1:23:49
we expect to see an uptick in ridership because of the lower fares but not enough to offset the loss in revenue from the lower fares. So my memory is correct. We’d still be hovering somewhere around 10%. But I don’t remember the exact number. Okay, so you’re saying that the increase in ridership would roughly offset? Not? Not quite know. So we’d still have we still anticipate a loss of revenue. But

Unknown Speaker 1:24:19
but some of that yes, would be offset with higher ridership but

Unknown Speaker 1:24:23
the least that’s what the model is showing. I see. Thank you. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 1:24:35
Mr. Quinn longlines had pre fares for quite some time. And I think the city subsidizes the fare is that correct? So is this a change to the subsidy that the city will be paying? Or am I understanding that come January will be individuals will be paying up there

Unknown Speaker 1:24:56
I can only do

Unknown Speaker 1:24:59
the thing

Unknown Speaker 1:25:00
Get I don’t know the answer

Unknown Speaker 1:25:02
you need to take, we’re gonna have to take a real close look at this because this is kind of a game changer as far as the whole reason why we bought up fares in the first place the fare box, we bought up all the money that was going into the fare box, we said, we will pay for that if we can get free fares for everyone, no matter what, who cards, nothing. And so with this new model, we’re going to have to really

Unknown Speaker 1:25:25
talk about that at these different policy levels to see if we want to continue that or not, because it’s a great benefit for folks in the city. But if this infrastructure is what we think it is, and it’s, it’s offsetting a lot of the reasons why we didn’t have leadership before, because our argument at the time was that there’s a RTD is charging, first of all, not the same as in Denver, same as a little tin, same as in boulders, innocent golden,

Unknown Speaker 1:25:53
we’re not getting the same bang for our buck. So we would like to buy those up and prove that we have people who will ride the bus. And certainly we had some pretty good growth in our small bus system for routes. So we need to take another look at that. And we’ll need to come to this group and the city council. And we have those discussions about how we want to purchase in the next eight months before this, or five,

Unknown Speaker 1:26:16
seven months

Unknown Speaker 1:26:18
before the new tariffs take place, because it’s a huge, huge factor

Unknown Speaker 1:26:25
in the future. Well, as a follow up question, I wonder if you have data of how many persons under nine, age 19 have been riding the buses? I know. I said I ride the 323. And I do see teenagers because that goes by the high school ride that bus says the four five every time every time I’m on that route. So I wonder if you see.

Unknown Speaker 1:26:51
What do you see in terms of ridership in that age group? Yeah, one of the challenges we have is you’re not allowed if we do an onboard survey every year, every couple of years, every couple of years where we actually have people that come a survey agency that comes on board and surveys, our riders, we are not allowed to survey under 18. So our data is somewhat

Unknown Speaker 1:27:21
what I’m looking for.

Unknown Speaker 1:27:23
was presented. Yeah, we don’t have solid data on that.

Unknown Speaker 1:27:30
We, it’s so

Unknown Speaker 1:27:33
short answer. I don’t have good numbers. But one of the things that and not only good probably be able to tell me to speak to this a little bit better. We do have a sense of at least as you mentioned, you know, by the schools, we definitely see high ridership. So I think our service planners have been able to kind of extrapolate from some of the data we have, based on you know, what the ups and downs are between the beginning and the ending of the school year. And then suppose assume that, you know, certain percentage that may be related to students that are writing to the schools.

Unknown Speaker 1:28:07
Okay, thank you, Mr. Chair. Just real quick, I just want to do a time check with you. We’re

Unknown Speaker 1:28:13
almost 730. So we’ve got about 20 more minutes for RTD. So I just wanted to give everybody a heads up that we’re trying to get it so you can have your comments at the end as well.

Unknown Speaker 1:28:26
I will hand it Oh, yeah. handed over to Patrick Stanley, who will provide you with an update on the Northwest Rail.

Unknown Speaker 1:28:34
In reference just said why don’t we hold our questions till the very end.

Unknown Speaker 1:28:41
Thank you. Good evening. Patrick Stanley, manager of engineering programs at RTD. And thank you for having us here tonight to give you an update.

Unknown Speaker 1:28:50
So look like I’m just gonna start with a basic kind of overview of the Northwest Rail app for everybody that might need a refresher course, but NorCal Pharrell was part of the 2004 Fast Track boat. It is a 42 mile segment that goes from Denver Union Station to Longmont. The first six miles of that was built as part of the Beeline opened in 2016. That’s an overhead electrified segment of rail that operates an RTD dedicated and controlled track.

Unknown Speaker 1:29:19
In 2010, we did the environmental evaluation, which looked at 55 round trips per day 11 stations and a full double tracking for the entire corridor. At that time, we didn’t have a dedicated funding source. We weren’t able to build it at that time. So kind of continue to study it 2013 We did the Northwest Area mobility study the NAMS project, which looked at really implementing the Northwest Rail in physical segments, so you know, Denver to Westminster, etc, and kind of in chunks.

Unknown Speaker 1:29:53
At that particular time it was identified that the Northwest Rail would be a longer term project

Unknown Speaker 1:30:00
And that was identified between the stakeholders in our TD at that time 2016 mentioned the D line did open. And now here in 2017, the concept for the peak Service came up really from our stakeholders to RTD that look at at peak service operation.

Unknown Speaker 1:30:19
So the first question is what is peak service. So the peak service out of proposing that we’re studying right now is that three weekday morning trips from Walmart to Denver, and three weekday evening trips back from Denver to Longmont. We’re partnering with local jurisdictions to plan 16 stations along the corridor, we’re also looking at feasible potential

Unknown Speaker 1:30:41
maintenance facility locations here in Longmont. Just mostly because we’re going to be running a different technology for the train, we won’t be looking at an overhead powered train for this 35 mile segment.

Unknown Speaker 1:30:54
That were the extension.

Unknown Speaker 1:30:57
We’re gonna Of course, we’re going to be operating on the end, let me back up a little bit, I should have said this in the first slide, but the 35 mile extension from existing D line will operate on the existing BNSF rail tracks. So obviously, that means we got to talk to the BNSF They’re obviously a big player in that particular arena. We’re also evaluating potential train types. It’s not our goal to select a specific vehicle as part of the study, but we do want to make sure that the type of vehicles that we need to operate are available. And then of course, you know, there’s a lot of partnership opportunities out there one in particular that we’re most excited about to explore is the Front Range passenger rail.

Unknown Speaker 1:31:39
So as I mentioned 60 stations working from the south up downtown Westminster, rebuild 116 flatiron station, downtown Lewisville boulder junction that depot square in inherent downtown Longmont, which is located near the first and main project.

Unknown Speaker 1:31:59
So RTD is leading the project, but we’re obviously not not doing it alone, as we have a study advisory team, which is made up of our representatives from the local stakeholders as far and as well as jurisdictional or transportation partners.

Unknown Speaker 1:32:14
In the area that people do see here on the screen here make up our FET provide us guidance and input throughout the process. Got to know pretty well and as part of that part of that team.

Unknown Speaker 1:32:28
So why is big service something that might be worth looking at right now. So given the fact we have limited resources, it would it would provide a potential for us to maybe bring a Northwest resolution to the to the northwest area sooner rather than later. It’s a cost effective approach to get some service started while we continue to pursue funding for a full day operation accomplishes some initial track safety and track upgrades. positive train control, which I’m sure many people have probably heard about, wouldn’t be required if we ran commuter rail service on the freight rail,

Unknown Speaker 1:33:01
that getting that safety, safety system implemented, implemented early on allows us to build upon that we’re not the first we wouldn’t be the first ones to do this. There are other locations that have looked at a peak service and they’ve been able to build upon that as the ridership grows. And then, you know, it allows us to address some of the ridership concerns today while we plan plan for the future.

Unknown Speaker 1:33:26
So we don’t have a set start date for the service. This is a this is a study at this point. We’re trying to we’re trying to evaluate what we call the common set of facts. We’re looking at what is the infrastructure needed to build this? And then how much is that going to cost? How much does it cost to build and which is a cost to operate? What type of agreements that we have to have in place? What are the ridership benefit benefits, impacts etc. which will be called a common set of facts that we’ll have at the end of the study in order to make some decisions and move forward in a direction on the Northwest Rail,

Unknown Speaker 1:34:02
as well as looking at potential funding sources throughout.

Unknown Speaker 1:34:06
So a little bit on the skinny schedule, and I apologize, I’m rushing

Unknown Speaker 1:34:10
to get through everything here. But that study schedule. It’s a five milestone process that we’re working through right now. We are at the tail end of milestone three right now, which is really defining the initial base footprint for what it would actually take to do the six new stations the passing sightings for the BNSF

Unknown Speaker 1:34:29
in the three, three round trips per day.

Unknown Speaker 1:34:33
Milestones one and two are really fact finding

Unknown Speaker 1:34:36
processes really looking at what is peak service, what is what has changed since we did the E? Obviously that was 2010. So the number of things have changed since that particular time. And we needed to find out what what what are the conditions look like today. And then moving forward into milestones four and five. It’s where we want to look at some

Unknown Speaker 1:34:54
potential partnerships and opportunities that might be out there and look at what are the strategies and next steps

Unknown Speaker 1:35:00
move forward. And in total at the end, it should wrap up towards the end of this end of this year.

Unknown Speaker 1:35:07
So real quick, I want to touch on we did have our first touch point community involvement.

Unknown Speaker 1:35:13
This was, we had a few open houses. One was January 31, in Boulder. And then we had our second one was in Westminster on February 2, it was an in house meeting, we had about a total of 195 total visitors to both of those, both of those open houses. At the event itself, we got about 29 Total comment cards. But we did give out, we had an online meeting that was running the same time, which had the exact same content, which allow people to view the content at their, at their schedule.

Unknown Speaker 1:35:45
And on that particular online meeting, we got about 3300 total views of the of the presentation and included about 170 or so completed surveys. And then on the RTD webpage itself, we got about 350 comments, and signups for emails.

Unknown Speaker 1:36:04
So real quick, right after the open houses, we had sat down with VSAT, we kind of went through, okay, what do we think we heard at these meetings. And in general, what we heard was there’s a either neutral or positive attitude towards the Northwest Rail. And there were, there were some I think,

Unknown Speaker 1:36:20
let’s say reserve excitement, perhaps that RTD was still looking at this trying to find a solution to the Northwest Rail solution.

Unknown Speaker 1:36:29
There were quite a few concerns with

Unknown Speaker 1:36:33
reverse commute. Since it only goes one way in the morning, there’s not really an opportunity for somebody from Denver to come back the other direction.

Unknown Speaker 1:36:41
There were some concerns about additional stations potentially come barreling and I want. In particular, a lot of people had questions about what is the BNSF? Or Front Range passenger rail partnership? And what does that look like a

Unknown Speaker 1:36:55
lot of questions about what’s the difference between this concept and the full service concept in particular, as it as it regards in regards to ridership, and cost? And then, you know, we had a number of comments from people that didn’t have non had non traditional commutes. Maybe somebody in the service industry or hospitality, that doesn’t really commute at a regular time and growth around the stations. What is the nature of the station’s look like? What are the development look like as a private public?

Unknown Speaker 1:37:24
You know, what, what are the impacts on the existing infrastructure at the station locations? And then finally, the big question that we all know is one that we have to address is what would happen if if peak service turns out to be maybe then feasible option it is what would we do that scenario?

Unknown Speaker 1:37:43
So then we had a chance to actually look at the comments themselves and kind of get checked, make sure that we were hearing what people were saying. And for the most part, there were a lot of parallels here. Generally, some happening, you know, some, I think excitement that we were still looking at the Northwest Rail in general.

Unknown Speaker 1:38:02
Same comments we had about stations and the locations, a lot of people were still mostly gunbarrel and nyuad, in particular,

Unknown Speaker 1:38:10
had a number of comments about the integrated service with RTD. How would this integrate in with other service services that we’re providing in the areas?

Unknown Speaker 1:38:20
You know, what would there be any reductions in the other services potentially as a as a result of the Northwest Rail possibly coming in? Questions about land use, you know, this particular one, people have concerns about maybe being pushed out of the station areas? You know, people can existing residents, and of course construction, which is a little ways off. But if we didn’t have this into a future phase, that’s something obviously we’d have to take into, excuse me take into consideration.

Unknown Speaker 1:38:50
So one of the questions we asked was, please select the reasons why service may not work for you peak service. And most of these, the bigger numbers are really related more towards the actual nature of the service itself itself, itself. Not providing weekend service, as an example is the first one midday service, evening service, and direction of service. Those are kind of the primary pieces, which is I think, to be expected a little bit with such a limited

Unknown Speaker 1:39:18
peak service type option, really towards the end was really more of the stations not necessarily being in a location that was convenient to use the service.

Unknown Speaker 1:39:29
So next, we asked about kind of the benefits, what are the benefits that people might see within Northwest Rail and then a little bit encouraging to see that a lot of these numbers were all fairly high. So to me that indicates that there’s a lot of different reasons why people could potentially use the Northwest Rail or would use the Northwest Rail. But you can see at the beginning of being stuck in traffic, which probably doesn’t surprise anybody getting out of the traffic jams, reduce equal admissions, opportunity to use read, work, rest, and then do transfer

Unknown Speaker 1:40:00
Patient opportunities kind of the first top four, and really down towards the end was the reduced transportation costs. And that’s really the cost personally, that you would have for your gas, parking, downtown maintenance and your vehicles, that sort of thing.

Unknown Speaker 1:40:15
And finally, handle online. Actually, we ask the question, and so you know, what, what are the most important factors to consider for a maintenance facility siting? I should note that most of the people that answered this actually don’t live around the locations of the maintenance facility that we’re proposing. But

Unknown Speaker 1:40:32
these are what you would expect in a study like this noise impacts air quality traffic disruptions, really more towards the end or your private property impacts and visual impacts.

Unknown Speaker 1:40:44
So where do we go from here? So we’re going to continue to define the initial footprint, we want to use the public input that we got and see what that notifies us, what that tells us, and how that informs the study, and make adjustments as necessary based on those comments. We’re going to continue to compile the common set of facts, it’s going to be something that happens throughout the entire process really all the way up to the end. And then we’re looking at some the next round of open houses,

Unknown Speaker 1:41:14
say late spring, early summer, but I think we’ve had some recent conversations with our SCT that we’re probably looking more more summer to late summer, probably for those those open houses. But that’s kind of predetermined yet we need to have, I think some some pretty serious conversations. And so again, the best timing for that, so.

Unknown Speaker 1:41:33
And that concludes the presentation. And I apologize, had to rush through it a little bit there. But

Unknown Speaker 1:41:40
questions?

Unknown Speaker 1:41:44
Okay, great. Okay, I’m gonna kick it back to Chris real quick. And he’s gonna give a quick update on the Walmart session.

Unknown Speaker 1:41:52
Yeah, and this is sort of related to the Northwest Rail.

Unknown Speaker 1:41:57
Use a little bit of history, back when the contract bids came in for the A line, and the G line. In

Unknown Speaker 1:42:07
is part of the Patrick’s plan, there was some extra money leftover. And so the RTD board, it was approximately $17 million allocated that for the first and main station of the downtown Long Run station. So it would be intended that being you know, knowing that we couldn’t necessarily do the rail right away, we’re going to least establish it as a transit hub. And that could work as a transit hub for the 119 BRT and also for the rail when it is established. So and I haven’t been working on this so though, you can correct me on the planner has been working on this couldn’t be here tonight. So I hope I get all this right Phil, correct me if I don’t, we have been working very closely with the city on a what is known as an imp or an infrastructure master plan that has been completed and now we have signed an inter government agreement with the city. So that the intent being that the money that RTD would have used to develop the station we will be providing to the city. So the city will take care of the construction and of the facility which will include new see out there approximately 10 Bus gates, the city also will be in charge of land acquisition. And then we will we are TD will provide the funds

Unknown Speaker 1:43:26
kind of as a lump sum to the city with the expected project completion somewhere around the 2025 timeframe.

Unknown Speaker 1:43:34
And I hope I can answer any questions you might have on that whole.

Unknown Speaker 1:43:55
Thing

Unknown Speaker 1:44:02
Hi, Allie man supply with RTD Project Manager for Colorado 118 BRT.

Unknown Speaker 1:44:11
So

Unknown Speaker 1:44:14
from 2017 to 2019 RTD engaged in the planning and environmental linkages study,

Unknown Speaker 1:44:24
which was the aftermath of NAMS the Northwest Area mobility study, which identified future BRT corridors in the Northwest region of the Denver Metro area.

Unknown Speaker 1:44:38
After that happened,

Unknown Speaker 1:44:40
the number one corridor identified as part of that map study was the color to 119 and therefore the PL happen and here we are with somebody to

Unknown Speaker 1:44:57
partner with seat up and others

Unknown Speaker 1:45:00
To make it a reality, the goals are outlined here. As you see, future travel demand

Unknown Speaker 1:45:10
is a huge issue. First and last mile connectivity. Optimizing the transit services between Boulder and Longmont and the reduction of transit travel times are definitely the huge goals for this project. It’s a truly multimodal project, it’s going to have a bike race right in the center of the diagonal.

Unknown Speaker 1:45:37
Really

Unknown Speaker 1:45:39
excited about what the outcome of this project is going to be and how it’s going to become a model for future BRT corridors. Not only in this region, but really elsewhere elsewhere in RTDs district.

Unknown Speaker 1:45:57
So I know that map on the right is a little bit hard to see, but probably you could see better on your screens.

Unknown Speaker 1:46:08
The one thing to understand about the what is call out of 190 BRT project is it’s really two projects with within the scope, if you will, what you see in that diagonal piece, sort of suddenly, with his pathway to the Northern Limit, at Holger, that’s the safety and mobility project that we are partnering with CDOT and Boulder County, to get

Unknown Speaker 1:46:39
the rest of it, let you see the extension to the south and extension to the north,

Unknown Speaker 1:46:46
or the BRT improvements, including a brand new parking ride in North Longmont. And the improvements on cu campus on the south side are what RTD is doing on its own. So that’s not to say that it’s going to be completely done by RTD. And its partners.

Unknown Speaker 1:47:10
Again, what you see here, we already talked about the PL and the vision. But PL had managed means and as part of their preferred alternative. We did a thorough traffic study as part of the safety and mobility project that we’re working on with CDOT and others, and decided that the best bang for our buck is what is called the key bypass lanes. So these are these bypass lanes that

Unknown Speaker 1:47:43
get implemented get built to bypass the queue as a sort of implies in its name. So the bus kid,

Unknown Speaker 1:47:55
get to the intersection Way ahead of you know, not getting stuck in the back of the queue, and then get its own signal cross the intersection. It’s a lightning and boarding and then getting back into the general purpose lane and proceeding.

Unknown Speaker 1:48:15
Again, bikeway is a key piece of this multimodal effort.

Unknown Speaker 1:48:22
There are other projects that feed into the big BRT project.

Unknown Speaker 1:48:29
One key one is the cuff and st busway, which we’ve been working with Phil and his staff to make sure that

Unknown Speaker 1:48:39
gets done correctly. And you know,

Unknown Speaker 1:48:44
they can do a multimodal

Unknown Speaker 1:48:47
corridor,

Unknown Speaker 1:48:50
and seatbelts call on the 119 securely taught by the safety and mobility project.

Unknown Speaker 1:48:57
We talked about how manage lanes were infeasible and we dealt with a queue bypass lane. So that’s

Unknown Speaker 1:49:04
what we’re going forward with.

Unknown Speaker 1:49:09
You see the key improvements identified if you

Unknown Speaker 1:49:14
pay attention to the legend and identify where the bikeway underpasses are the cue bypass lanes, the locations of the parking lights

Unknown Speaker 1:49:28
and

Unknown Speaker 1:49:29
where the stations and platforms are going to be in the diagonal piece.

Unknown Speaker 1:49:36
Other roadway improvements

Unknown Speaker 1:49:40
adaptive signal system that CDOT region four has already implemented, it’s going to make traffic signals work far better and the diagonal piece of the project. The cycle lengths adjust during the day it senses

Unknown Speaker 1:50:00
real time traffic and adjust accordingly instead of the traditional, you know, having a NPN and off D flat, so it changes all the time.

Unknown Speaker 1:50:13
A lot of citing striping lighting at partner rides and other platforms, and a whole complete reconstruction of the intersection at Colorado 52 which is also IBM drive to the to the west.

Unknown Speaker 1:50:40
All right, so on the

Unknown Speaker 1:50:45
graphic to the right, you’ll see what the key bypass Lane a good example of it is that 63rd Where you see the parking right in the middle of the highway. You know, the what is the middle a grassy area right now, there is an animated version of this graphic. So when you click on it, you’ll see the bus coming into the maroon on the you know, left side of the intersection, if you will, proceeds to the party right does it’s aligning your onboarding proceeds to the traffic signal, and then that little horizontal bar turns green, ahead of the general purpose traffic, the bus travels through the intersection and then back to the you know, put this traffic on the right side of the intersection.

Unknown Speaker 1:51:38
That’s how it’s gonna work. That’s what the queue bypass lane is about. And

Unknown Speaker 1:51:44
the parking lights facility to talk about the brand new one at Park Ridge,

Unknown Speaker 1:51:50
which we are partnering pretty heavily with the city to acquire that drive that we needed for that parking like facility from the developer to the city and then to us. So we can deal with the app that basically out already worked out at that location. And then a whole bunch of stops. As mentioned in the first graphic.

Unknown Speaker 1:52:16
In the cities of Longmont and Boulder,

Unknown Speaker 1:52:20
there are going to be BRT grade stops, not all are going to have shelters and that is because of the lack of public right away. So if we have the room, we will install them if not, it’s going to be just attention a flag. We have done that with both cities of Longmont and Boulder staff,

Unknown Speaker 1:52:41
two rounds of meetings each to make sure we will do the best we can with those BRT stops

Unknown Speaker 1:52:51
I suppose we should have started with this slide. But yeah, it’s BRT is a reliable, convenient, faster and more frequencies than the traditional

Unknown Speaker 1:53:02
bus service and there are going to be two variations of it for the color 119 BRT, the orange draft and the blue route serving different parts of

Unknown Speaker 1:53:13
Longmont and Boulder, a similar to flying flyer

Unknown Speaker 1:53:19
which is that

Unknown Speaker 1:53:22
so

Unknown Speaker 1:53:25
that’s what I was talking about the blue pattern and you’ll see the headways the frequency rather weekdays and holidays as well as the orange route serving different parts of both cities

Unknown Speaker 1:53:44
Here’s another look at it. Those are the BRT great stops we’re looking at you know again, identify them in Boulder and Longmont

Unknown Speaker 1:53:53
orange basically

Unknown Speaker 1:53:55
the orange app basically replaces the replaces the J route from University of Colorado

Unknown Speaker 1:54:03
and

Unknown Speaker 1:54:05
the blue out starts at downtown Boulder and replaces the bowl

Unknown Speaker 1:54:23
gotta wait till the end for questions.

Unknown Speaker 1:54:33
Thank you

Unknown Speaker 1:54:38
just want to say how much we appreciate our TD and their staff coming here.

Unknown Speaker 1:54:43
You get them once a year, at least. And so we really appreciate their time and efforts and you can see how easy they are and especially how much they touch along with what they’re doing. So thanks

Unknown Speaker 1:55:01
Do I ask any questions from the board?

Unknown Speaker 1:55:08
Well, yes, I have any questions just not enough time,

Unknown Speaker 1:55:14
which I would love to do another hour. But I know not everyone else would.

Unknown Speaker 1:55:19
With FRP AR, that has to come to a vote,

Unknown Speaker 1:55:23
I believe, from our citizens. So I’m just curious, you know, the 2004.

Unknown Speaker 1:55:31
To make a joke about my age, I was 14 when FasTracks was passed, and long lat is very anxious about getting a rail. And now it seems like RTD is kind of siding with RPR. But then that ultimately has to be passed by voters. I’m just curious how, how, how’s that going to campaign for the public that already is kind of wary? Of RTD?

Unknown Speaker 1:55:58
Yeah, that’s a good question. So first thing, I guess, I would like to say the peak service study that we’re doing right now is really to look at, you know, what it would take for RTD to run peak service, we do obviously want to keep an eye on what a potential partnership would be the Front Range passenger rail, I think there’s a real opportunity there, that might open some doors that are maybe close to this right now. Maybe in particular, probably regarding funding, maybe federal funding in particular. So I think we’re keeping our eye really close down what’s happening with the Front Range passenger rail, they’re also doing a study right now. We don’t know if they’re gonna be. I can’t I don’t want to speak for him too much. But I think there’s still a question about 2004 versus 2000. I’m sorry, 2024 versus 2026. Vote.

Unknown Speaker 1:56:44
But Indy cars in that front range passenger will be the best one to answer that question. As far as timing, but so I think our first goal that we’re trying to do is find out what are the facts for peak service? And what what, what picture? Does that mean? And where does that put us? And what what possibility? Do we have to move forward? Regardless, maybe Front Range passenger rail being there as well. So

Unknown Speaker 1:57:08
hopefully, I’ve answered your question. But I think,

Unknown Speaker 1:57:11
you know, if it doesn’t have been a partnership, obviously, that’s something that we’ll we’ll have to address together with, for means passenger rail, how that I’m still excited of this getting done. And then another question about the low mass station RTD. Board committed to construct the station in 2011. It’ll be done, hopefully, 2025. Can someone just explain

Unknown Speaker 1:57:33
the length of that process, why, why it takes 1415 years.

Unknown Speaker 1:57:43
All bets are off, it was RTD did not have the money at the time that they made. They were just getting into that agreement with

Unknown Speaker 1:57:51
the

Unknown Speaker 1:57:59
eagle p3, that eagle p3 was the name of the project that really did the whole a line and the West line and those different things. And it was part of that that we started to, is because of the way the contract was structured, that we were able to get the cost savings. Of course, we raised our hand first first thing and said, hey, we’d like to realize that cost savings up here because we don’t think we’ll see anything soon. So that started the process in 2011. And then we’ve been going through the process, our team was pretty sincere about the idea that we needed to do an infrastructure master plan to make sure that everything was in place for the station to be at that location. And then yeah, it’s just

Unknown Speaker 1:58:45
I hope

Unknown Speaker 1:58:47
we’ve little bit touched on land use and I hope RTDs I’m sure you guys are ready, as the governor was trying to also tackle land use that has unfortunately failed.

Unknown Speaker 1:59:00
Me because it’s really you need both to have a good transit system, a good plan.

Unknown Speaker 1:59:07
But really, I would just like to end, you know, because I think overall, we’re always dealing with what came first the chicken or the egg. And, you know, I look at the examples. So like, you know, Houston, granted bigger city, but they redesigned their entire network

Unknown Speaker 1:59:27
essentially doubled and increased ridership. So, I think thinking outside the box and not waiting for riders, but maybe building building and they will come. So that’s my final comments.

Unknown Speaker 1:59:45
Mr. Stanley,

Unknown Speaker 1:59:48
have you initiated conversations with BNSF? Yes, we have. So in fact, it took us a little bit longer than we were hoping it would take. But we do we do actually have a contract with him right now.

Unknown Speaker 2:00:00
Just think it was actually last week Michigan notice to proceed to provide 30% basic engineering plans,

Unknown Speaker 2:00:07
they will give us a price estimate a cost estimate for what it’s going to take for us to operate on their on their particular line. So we know for know, for a fact that there’s going to be several sightings, that will have to be part of the project. And those would, the way those would work is the BNSF would actually pull over on those sightings during a certain time period, certain chunk of time, so say the peak morning service, they would pull over, and then we would have operational priority on the tracks during that time. Right now, it’s all the single tracks. So that’s one of the pieces that we need to get from them as a better understanding of where those signings need to be, how many there needs to be, how long do they need to be, as well as what type of prep track improvements would need to happen, potentially, to run a passenger service on their freight rails. So we have talked to them, they’ve been, they’ve been at the table, we’ve been talking with him for a little bit.

Unknown Speaker 2:01:01
So hopefully, we’ll start getting a little bit quicker movement on that here just shortly.

Unknown Speaker 2:01:08
So it’s not a full go. But, uh, come to the table and negotiate might work. We want to understand what the cost is. And we want to, we want to understand what their what their requirements are going to be for us to operate on the line. In order to do that. That’s what we want to engage with them. We’ve got to contract to do some work with them, so that we can fully understand what those those are. So at the end of the day, we’ll have a cost estimate from them on what it would take for us to do as well as what infrastructure is needed to do it. Okay, so it’s a contract, make an assessment, and then you’ll go forward from there. Yeah. Okay.

Unknown Speaker 2:01:42
Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 2:01:45
And

Unknown Speaker 2:01:46
Mr.

Unknown Speaker 2:01:48
Aman sapi.

Unknown Speaker 2:01:53
Have you is there any other method under consideration besides underpasses for the bike route on the BRT? And the reason why I asked that is, I think, you know, what the county commissioners, there was quite a lot of concern about safety and

Unknown Speaker 2:02:10
underpass involvement with the bike route, and I just wondered if there was anything else that could happen is a lot of conversation about nyuad when they want road comes into that being unsafe, and this is just listening to other comments. So yeah, I just wanted to get your input on Sure. being considered, I can definitely help.

Unknown Speaker 2:02:34
The person who understands it better the project manager for the bikeway get back with you on that. But yes, they were definitely other

Unknown Speaker 2:02:44
options were considered overpass for one, which would be

Unknown Speaker 2:02:53
then you would be subject to video, of course. And then also,

Unknown Speaker 2:03:00
I believe it was more expensive to build. And there is they’re hurting for money. They only

Unknown Speaker 2:03:08
have secured funds for most of the underpasses, not all of them. So they’re looking at the last series of the TIG grads, I believe. And perhaps they raise

Unknown Speaker 2:03:25
grants, which we should be hearing next.

Unknown Speaker 2:03:31
Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 2:03:32
to see if you would pay pay for them. But

Unknown Speaker 2:03:36
Stacy proctor from Boulder County would be a better

Unknown Speaker 2:03:40
better suited to answer your your question, I can definitely cover that. I know one of the concerns is that it narrows down to 12 feet in the underpass. And it’s a mixed use with pedestrians. And thank you Chair laner for sending out that article about

Unknown Speaker 2:03:57
intermixing with bicycles and pedestrians.

Unknown Speaker 2:04:02
So I just wondered if there was a solution to that or a way to address those concerns. At the touch points, I believe there’s 16 feet but then it tapers back to 12 feet.

Unknown Speaker 2:04:16
Of course making 16 feet obviously would be a better option but it’s got to be

Unknown Speaker 2:04:22
quite a bit.

Unknown Speaker 2:04:24
Understand, right? That’s just a concern about the speed of bicyclists combined with pedestrians and you have an excellent point. Yeah, with the E bikes one now. I believe all classes of E bikes are going to be allowed on it. So classes one, two and three. That means up to 28 mph. Yeah, it becomes

Unknown Speaker 2:04:47
a challenge.

Unknown Speaker 2:04:49
Okay, thank you

Unknown Speaker 2:05:09
I just want to thank all of our RTD presenters, you’ve given us a lot to think about.

Unknown Speaker 2:05:16
You’ve already answered the question that I have. So one more brief question. Could one of you explain to me what run board means? I’ve been trying to figure it out from context on your figures and I stumped.

Unknown Speaker 2:05:32
Excellent question. Thank you. We have me say a run board. That is the time period of when a service change goes into effect until it ends. We have three run boards a year, we make a service change in January, it ends in May, and we have a longboard that starts the next day,

Unknown Speaker 2:05:52
ends in August or early September, and then another one that then continues again until January. So it’s a period of when a service change is in effect.

Unknown Speaker 2:06:05
Yeah, and I just want to reiterate, Council Member or board member secondary. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 2:06:13
Follow this information

Unknown Speaker 2:06:15
over Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 2:06:30
Thanks for having us.

Unknown Speaker 2:06:39
Do you have anything you have? Can we wrap up? Excuse me? Do we want to wrap up or is there anything else you need to add?

Unknown Speaker 2:06:47
Nothing more about RTD. But I did just want to let you know that this is Stacy’s last meeting with us. So

Unknown Speaker 2:06:54
our last tip meeting with us so appreciate all her work and help over the years. She has been with us. So thank you, Stacy. And Ms. You.

Unknown Speaker 2:07:10
And councilmember, do you have any comments?

Unknown Speaker 2:07:17
All right, I guess we can wrap this up guy, excuse me in a motion to end the meeting.

Unknown Speaker 2:07:28
Okay, well comments from the board.

Unknown Speaker 2:07:34
Oh RTD is still there, I’ll say thank you.

Unknown Speaker 2:07:40
But do expect an email from me. I’m more curious about budgeting and what Lamacq contributes and what taxes we contribute and what the outcome is. So yeah, I would just suggest if you could send that through Stacy or me and we can send it to them get the answers and send them all back to all the two directors to the right person will just make sure everybody gets the information

Unknown Speaker 2:08:11
likewise, thank you RTD and thanks for your patience and in answering all the questions that we have. And

Unknown Speaker 2:08:19
all the other board members for their excellent questions as well. And once again cheerleader thank you for that article you sent out in between meetings.

Unknown Speaker 2:08:28
And AC thank you for your excellent help all the time.

Unknown Speaker 2:08:47
Any motion to adjourn the meeting

Unknown Speaker 2:08:53
Do you want to find out the food Council Marvel has become

Unknown Speaker 2:08:58
oh she says.

Unknown Speaker 2:09:11
to adjourn the meeting

Unknown Speaker 2:09:16
all those in favor say aye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai